"The suburban trend is taking off for web hosting andco-location space," says Chris Epstein, president ofDataCentersNow, which just announced a 110,000-sf O'Hare high-techwarehouse conversion. "Over the next year, suburban marketsnationwide, especially those located near airports, will become theprimary focus of telecommunications and data centerdevelopment."

Bob Hebbeler, US director of co-location at Band-X, the onlinetelecom capacity exchange, says that the continuing fashion forcity-center co-location development is petering out. "Eventuallysomeone is going to need a big chuck of co-location space, and theyare going to have to move out to the suburbs," he says.

The trend in Europe, according to Band-X, has been to locate inoutlying industrial areas, resulting in facility sizes four timesthose of the average US co-location site. Correspondingly, Europeanco-location prices posted on Band-X, at an average of $726 per rackper month, are 20% lower than in the US