CEO Bill Barney is launching a new company targeting the development of cable landing station and edge data centre facilities in emerging markets and underserved economies, particularly those with US interests in today’s geopolitical environment.
The new Annapolis, Maryland-based firm, called Modularity, is a new iteration of AMSS, a US company that has been in business some 60 years building modular infra[1]structure across communications, residential and hospitality projects. “Basically, we are taking over their manufacturing business… in Lancaster, Pennsylvania,” Barney, CEO and co-founder of Modularity told CommsDay. “Its got a long history of building, not in the telecom and data centre space, but working for the State Department, typically builds in remote areas, computer centres… they built the [US] embassy in Baghdad.”
The business is also co-founded by COO Alan Rand, formerly of AMSS. Modularity will pivot the business to focus on modular cable landing stations and da[1]ta centres, combining that with systems integration and managed services capabilities.
The company’s first three projects will be in Iceland, the Middle East and in the Pacific Islands. Barney expects these deals to be announced in the coming months. Commenting on its opportunities in the Pacific, Barney said “that part of the world has all of a sudden become critical” highlighting the “shift in geopolitics” between the US and China. “We are very focused on being a US-only company.”
At this point, Barney said the “sweet spot” for Modularity is projects below 10 megawatts, with most coming in “sub-1MW.” “Think of us as kind of the pointy end of the sword, we are going into a lot of these markets… we’ll build the first deployment. Our limitation is, once you get above 10 megawatts, it gets very difficult for us to build,” he said. “The reality is we are just the beginning… typically, you need a data centre on the ground first, particularly when you are testing a new market, so in many cases, that’s what we are doing… putting a landing station, then a data centre.”
The company can deliver a facility within 90 days of ordering Barney added. “We have that capacity to do that now. We can essentially do in a year, anywhere from 12 to 15 of these things at a time. The factory has additional capacity and storage, so we can essentially do slightly more if we needed to.”
As a manufacturer, Modularity will produce the infrastructure, but will go as far as to operate the facilities. According to the firm’s website, it also offers so-called “transmission modules,” designed to support the deployment of optical signal amplification and reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer systems in harsh environments.
