As we enter 2026, we can now take a look back at what has been another truly fantastic year here at Netwise.

2025 saw advancements made ubiquitously across all facets of the organisation, as various large-scale projects progressed, along with the usual smaller-scale improvements and progressions felt naturally throughout the course of another year in operation.

Heavy investment continues in our future roadmap, as we again expand our total capacity in line with the ever-present demand for world-class data centre and connectivity services in London.

We’re extremely proud of the progress made throughout the last 12 months, from the big wins – like securing Unit 7 for Phase 4 of development at London East – to the everyday welcoming of new clients into our world-class facility.

Here are some of the main headlines from 2025:

• We fully deployed Data Hall 3 – Data Hall 3 reached completion in Q3 2025, allowing for continued client deployments in the closing stages of the year, and into 2026. This resulted in the completion of Phase 2 works at NLE. The build process for Data Hall 3 can be found on our #BuildBlog.
• We upgraded our Layer 1 wave capabilities – we upgraded our MUX infrastructure at all core nodes, resulting in the ability to deploy 100G and 400G waves between on-net locations. This enables higher capacity backhauling across our metro network, ideal for clients with very high throughput requirements between sites.
• We expanded our node in CLL – early in the year, we increased our footprint in CLL from 3 racks to a 14 rack private pod, with the site now operating as a full Supernode, in keeping with our deployment architecture in THN and HEX/LD8.
• The Phase 3 expansion project pushed ahead – as expected, much of the focus for development work in 2025 centred around the Unit 5 expansion, which will house Data Halls 5 and 6. This took a slight back seat as Phase 2 wrapped up, however progress continues to be documented as part of our #BuildBlog.
• We secured further expansion space for Phase 4 – in the closing stages of 2025, we officially took over Unit 7 on the Datapoint Estate, meaning we now have full authority over the entire free-standing building on the south side of the estate. This had been on our strategic roadmap for a long time, even influencing design decisions implemented during Phase 1, so to see this come to fruition is perhaps the most significant milestone for us in 2025.

The real meat of 2025 has been spent on moving open development projects forward. Our multifaceted approach to development and growth means the gears are always turning on various additions and evolutions across every touch point within the organisation. This is in service of growing capacity at our London East footprint, and the continual improvement of service for our clients.

Taking Data Hall 3 from shell to approaching half full in 2025 is no small feat, and we’re very proud to continue seeing such impressive uptake at our flagship facility. We’re building out new data halls just about as quickly as we can fill them at present, ensuring existing clients have room to grow, and servicing new client requirements without interruption or delay.

We closed on a deal for the final footprint as part of the London East property portfolio in Q4 2025, which had been a long-standing strategy since taking over Unit 6 in back 2020. The implemented design for Unit 6 – which now has all four data halls online – catered for flanking expansion options from day one, and with both Unit 5 and Unit 7 now under Netwise authority, this plan has come to full fruition sooner than we had initially forecast.

The arterial corridor positioning in the currently active footprint allows breaching for access and services, creating one single operating facility that will be scaled to 4.5MW at full capacity.

As with the active development underway in Unit 5, which will house Data Halls 5 and 6, Unit 7 will again provide expansion room for two further halls (7 and 8), becoming one single operating facility housing around 500 client racks, across ~38,000ft².

Detailed plans for the new footprint addition are still developing at this stage, however it is expected to house two high-density halls suitable for the fast-changing infrastructure landscape we’re facing in the years to come.

General performance has again been impressive, and further underlines our unfaltering stability as a data centre operator you can rely on long-term – a very important factor to consider when choosing a colocation partner for your critical IT infrastructure.

We’re tracking more technical performance metrics than ever before. Our custom monitoring platform now has active eyes on over 10,000 sensors, nearly 2,000 in-service network ports, and over 1,800 device status metrics. Our network has grown both in capability and capacity, providing critical transit, backhaul and interconnection services across our five PoPs, and onwardly to various other operational locations and client premises.

The third-party carriers that PoP with us directly at London East have also seen a sharp uptake in direct-to-client service deployments this year, as the site further beds in as a high-demand location for those seeking alternatives to the likes of Telehouse and Equinix in the Docklands area when building out their own networks.

Operating performance metrics have also grown in scope, and demonstrate the impressiveness of our KPIs, which are themselves fundamental to our position as London’s most trusted independent data centre operator. By tracking a wider range of client account metadata, we can see that our average client retention time is 6.1 years for those beyond their initial term, and 6.8 years for those beyond two terms. Our longest standing client has now been with us for nearly 15 years, a true testament to the quality of our facilities and our services, and across all client service contracts presently in active deployment with us, we’ve achieved a whopping 872 years of combined service time.

With another fantastic year in the books here at Netwise, we can look ahead to 2026.

The year in front of us will see massive strides made on the Phase 3 work schedule, as the expansion into Unit 5 takes shape. We enter the year with major progress already made on the non-technical side of the new footprint, which has seen the new offices, meeting room and NOC taking form. The technical side of the build is to continue throughout 2026, with a view to onlining Data Hall 5 as quickly as possible, to provide expansion capacity in keeping with ongoing demand.

We’re excited to share these developments with you throughout the year ahead.

As we close the doors on yet another record-beating year at Netwise, we can now take a look back at the last 12 months of change and development, which have been host to major leaps forward in a wide range of areas within the organisation.

We always knew that 2024 would be a big year, and we were not wrong. In the last 12 months, we have made great strides in the development of our London East facility, which continues to grow into one of London’s most compelling independent data centre offerings.

Here are some of the headlines from 2024:

• Netwise turned 15 – having been founded in 2009, Netwise turned 15 in 2024, which is a great milestone and a testament to the unwavering stability of the organisation.
• We fully deployed Data Hall 4 – Data Hall 4 reached completion in early 2024, allowing for continued client deployments throughout the year. The build process for Data Hall 4 can be found on our #BuildBlog.
• The deployment of Data Hall 3 began – in the closing stages of 2024, we began pre-stage works on Data Hall 3, which is the final hall for deployment in the current footprint at London East (ahead of the large-scale expansion in 2025). This will be the final hall as part of the Phase 2 development cycle, and will be documented on our #BuildBlog in the coming months.
• We closed NLC in the summer – the summer of 2024 saw the closure of our legacy site in Bermondsey, Netwise London Central. This was a very large project that had been under planning for many months prior to execution, resulting in an extremely smooth closure process once the work schedule began. This included extensive decommissioning works, while also continuing with the Phase 2 development schedule at London East.
• We migrated all live systems from NLC to NLE – as part of the NLC closure, we migrated all client systems from NLC to NLE. This was a very complex operation spanning eight evenings in total, with the entire operation being completed extremely smoothly, thanks to the extensive planning phase, and the in-house expertise of our world-class team. In total, 126 enclosures were moved out of NLC.
• We upgraded our core network – all of our on-net nodes received an extensive upgrade in the first half of the year, increasing overall capacity and improving performance for clients that utilise our world-class transit network.
• Lee Smith joined as Junior Engineer – in Q4, we expanded our team with the joining of Lee, our new Junior Engineer, who is already and integral part of our in-house electrical engineering team. Expect a full introductory post very soon.
• The NLE expansion project officially started in Q4 – very late in 2024, we broke ground on the next phase of development at NLE. The installation of the mezzanine structure within the new footprint began in December – you can expect plenty of #BuildBlog updates as Phase 3 progresses in 2025.
• Works began on the full redevelopment of our customer portal – we have big plans for our customer portal in 2025 and beyond, as we begin a full rework of the UI/UX. We’ve teamed up with the same outfit behind our company rebrand and main website redesign from 2019 for this project, and we hope to have more news on this later in the year. The design of this new portal began in the closing stages of 2024, as a collaborative project including our development team.

Aside to the somewhat unique task of closing NLC, the main focus of the year has absolutely centred around the continued expansion of our flagship data centre, NLE. This likely comes as no real surprise, given the pace at which our services are being taken up in the market, and the unabating growth within the sector as a whole. Our current forecasting sees no slow up in this ongoing trend, and as such we will continue to invest heavily in our future at NLE and beyond.

Looking past the more tangible projects in 2024, financial performance has again been exceptionally positive, which further solidifies our position as a leader in the market, providing unmatched stability for our growing roster of clients, and of course enabling our expansion in the years ahead. Base revenues for the year have grown by 21% – despite the distraction of closing NLC in the summer – which in our fifteenth year of operation is all the more remarkable.

In short, 2024 has been another incredible year for Netwise, setting us up for another truly exceptional year in 2025.

So, how are things looking for the year ahead? We’re expecting more of the same, with a major focus on the completion of Phase 2 (Data Hall 3), and the larger expansion project as part of Phase 3, which will run in tandem throughout the first few months of the year (Data Halls 5 and 6, plus amenities). While we can’t comment too far in advance on other plans for the year, we do have some very exciting developments in the works, that could see further expansion plans confirmed before the end of 2025 – watch this space!