Why Alabama is a market
Alabama is a federal and defence market before it is anything else. Huntsville holds the Army's missile and aviation command, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, the FBI's growing Redstone campus and the contractor base that follows all three. That is a customer base with real compliance requirements, real latency requirements to local people, and a longstanding shortage of commercial colocation to put it in.
This page is written for the state rather than for Huntsville alone, and the data forced that choice. The two best connected buildings in Alabama are in Auburn and Montgomery, not Huntsville, and the operator at the centre of this market holds buildings at opposite ends of the state. A page called North Alabama would have had to leave out most of its own evidence.
The second argument is power. Alabama sits in the TVA and Alabama Power territories, with industrial rates below the national average, a large nuclear and hydro base, and none of the interconnection queue pressure of the big coastal markets. It is also outside hurricane exposure once you are north of Montgomery.
What it is not is a hyperscale market. Read the announced section before you plan around scale here.
One building, three independent records
The single most useful fact on this page is a cross-confirmation. DC BLOX operates a building at 333 Diamond Drive NW in Huntsville. The City of Huntsville's own air permit register carries it. PeeringDB lists DC BLOX HSV1 at the same street number, maintained by the networks inside it rather than by the landlord. And the city's building permit record against that address shows an alteration commercial permit for $18,713,820 issued on 30 April 2026, alongside earlier permits of $24,037,700 in October 2024 and $5,325,000 in September 2022.
Roughly $48 million of permitted work at one address over four years, the most recent tranche within the last twelve months, on a building networks are demonstrably plugged into, run by an operator who has separately announced a second Huntsville site. That is as close as this site gets to proving a market is being invested in, and it is worth more than a large count of undated rows somewhere else.
Two limits belong with it. A permit proves construction spending, not available space, and nothing in the public record says what is contractible in that building today. And the dollar figures above sit in the register's description text rather than in a structured date field, which is why the count below reads as undated.
Air permits at Huntsville and Bridgeport, including the DC BLOX building the City of Huntsville's own register also carries. Every figure below is a count of filings we collected ourselves, and every row links to the record it came from.
| Measure | Figure | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Filings we track | 3 | Deduplicated. Across 2 sources, no dated record to no dated record |
| New building filings | 1 | Shell and site work, which is capacity two years out, not now |
| Distinct addresses | 3 | Separate sites in the record, not separate buildings |
| Operators we can name | 1 | 1 of 3 filings name a recognizable operator. The rest name an engineer, a builder or a holding company |
| Filings with no date published | 3 | The source publishes the facility, not the filing date |
Operators appearing by name: DC BLOX (1).
Collected from EPA ECHO air facility records for Alabama and Huntsville air permit records. A permit proves that construction is happening. It does not prove that space is available, and no public filing anywhere discloses what is contractible at a named building. That answer comes from an operator call, which is the part we do by hand. See how we verify capacity.
Three do, and they are unusually well aligned. The interconnection layer comes from PeeringDB, which the network operators maintain themselves, so every row links to the building's own public entry. The permit layer is three sites drawn from two separate registers, the federal air file and the City of Huntsville's own, and it is small but it names the buildings that matter. The announced layer is here and is two projects from one operator. The fourth is not here at all: our verified facility inventory does not extend to Alabama, so there is no building count on this page and no zero standing in for one. See how we verify capacity for what each collection proves.
Who is actually plugged in across Alabama
A building existing and a building being connected are different facts, and only one of them decides whether your traffic can get where it needs to go cheaply. These figures come from PeeringDB, which the network operators themselves maintain, so every row below links to the building's own public entry.
| Measure | Figure | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Buildings listed | 6 | Registered in PeeringDB across Alabama, by 5 operators |
| Buildings with a network present | 6 | Every listed building has at least one network in it |
| Network presences | 31 | Counted per building, so a carrier in three buildings counts three times |
| Internet exchange presences | 3 | Where you can reach many networks through one port instead of many cross-connects |
| Carrier presences | 5 | The physical transport choice you can buy without leaving the building |
| In the densest building | 39% | AUBix Auburn holds 12 of the market's network presences |
The most connected buildings here
| Networks | Building | Operator | Exchanges | Carriers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 | AUBix Auburn | AUBix LLC | 1 | 1 |
| 11 | RSA Dexter Avenue Datacenter | Retirement Systems of Alabama (RSA) | 1 | 1 |
| 4 | DC BLOX BHM1 - DCBLOX Birmingham | DC BLOX Parent LLC | 1 | 1 |
| 2 | DC BLOX HSV1 - DCBLOX Huntsville | DC BLOX Parent LLC | 0 | 1 |
| 1 | Peace Communications HSV1 | Peace Communications | 0 | 0 |
| 1 | Simple Helix | SimpleHelix | 0 | 1 |
From PeeringDB, which is maintained by the network operators present in these buildings rather than by the landlords, which is what makes it worth more than a directory. Two limits. Entries are voluntary, so a building showing no networks may be single tenant or may simply never have registered. And a network being present says nothing about whether the building has space, power or a price for you: that is still a call.
What has been announced in Alabama
Announcements are not filings. Nobody has to build what they announce, the figure is the one the developer chose to publish, and the date moves. They are here because megawatts are what a requirement is measured in, and because the size of what is coming changes who will take your call. Every figure below links to a published report that states it, and was checked against at least one other independent report before it was written down.
| Capacity | Operator | Project | What was announced |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 MW | DC BLOX | Montgomery, Interstate Industrial Park at Hope Hull | Announced on 14 November 2024 as one of four southeastern hyperscale edge node sites, alongside Huntsville, North Augusta in South Carolina and the Atlanta East campus at Conyers, Georgia. Reported at roughly $30 million, on Interstate Industrial Park off the Hope Hull exit of I-65, with construction stated to begin in June 2025. The row carries 5 MW because that is the capacity described as delivered initially for the anchor tenant; the 40 MW is what the site is said to be able to reach if further tenants arrive. Treat the gap between those two numbers as the question to ask on a call rather than as supply. Initial capacity for a hyperscale anchor tenant. The developer states the site can scale to 40 MW for further tenants, which is a design ceiling rather than a commitment |
| 5 MW | DC BLOX | Huntsville, a second site alongside the existing HSV1 | Announced in the same 14 November 2024 release as the Montgomery site. This is the project that ties the three layers on this page together: DC BLOX already operates HSV1 at 333 Diamond Dr NW, which is the building the City of Huntsville's own air register carries and which PeeringDB lists at the same street number, and the city's building permits record $18,713,820 of alteration work issued there on 30 April 2026. An operator expanding in a market it already serves, with the permit record and the interconnection register independently naming the same address, is the strongest evidence of commitment anywhere in this state. Capacity the site is designed to provide, as stated in the announcement |
Both rows are the same operator, and that is the most important thing about announced capacity in Alabama. DC BLOX is a regional provider rather than a hyperscaler, the figures are 5 MW rather than hundreds, and they are edge node sites built to serve the Southeast rather than campuses built to chase national AI demand. For most readers of this page that is the right size: the requirement people bring us here is a few cabinets to a few hundred kilowatts near people, not a hall. What Alabama does not have is a published hyperscale number. No operator has announced one, and the absence is real rather than a gap in our collection. If you need tens of megawatts in one building in this state, the honest answer today is that nobody has said they are building it. Read the reporting.
Announced capacity is collected by hand from trade reporting and company statements, and each figure links to the report it came from. It is kept apart from the permit record above and never added to it: one is a document a jurisdiction issued, the other is a plan a company published. Neither is availability.
Ask what is available in the specific building rather than in the operator's footprint. This market is concentrated enough that an operator can truthfully describe a strong Southeast presence while the room in front of you is nearly full. Then ask what the expansion path is on that campus and whether it is funded, because the one operator here with announced growth has announced it at 5 MW increments, not at hall scale. And ask about connectivity honestly: two of the six listed buildings carry a single network each.
Where the market actually is
Huntsville
Where the demand is and where the investment record is. Three listed buildings, DC BLOX HSV1 alongside Peace Communications and Simple Helix, plus the permitted Starbelt site on South Profile Place. Thin on network count, strong on everything else. If your requirement is driven by people or by federal work, it starts and probably ends here.
Auburn
The most connected building in the state, and a genuine surprise. AUBix carries twelve networks and an exchange presence in a university town of sixty thousand. Worth scoping if interconnection matters more to you than proximity to Huntsville, and worth knowing about simply because almost nobody does.
Montgomery
Two things at once. The Retirement Systems of Alabama building on Dexter Avenue carries eleven networks and an exchange presence today, and DC BLOX has announced a new site at Hope Hull off I-65. It is the one place in the state with both an established interconnection anchor and announced new capacity.
Birmingham and the TVA corridor
Birmingham holds DC BLOX BHM1, four networks and an exchange presence, the operator's other Alabama building. North of it, the permitted site at Bridgeport sits in the TVA Widows Creek corridor, where retired coal generation and its grid connection have drawn data center interest across several states.
When Alabama is right, and when it is the wrong choice
It is right when you need to be near Huntsville's federal and defence base, when your requirement is a few cabinets to a few hundred kilowatts, or when you want a Southeast second site that is not Atlanta. Power is cheap, the operator is regional and will actually return your call for a requirement this size, and the market is uncrowded in a way that tends to show up in pricing.
It is the wrong choice if you need scale. Nobody has announced a hyperscale building in this state, the announced figures are 5 MW, and the largest listed building carries twelve networks. A requirement measured in tens of megawatts should be tested against Atlanta first, which is three and a half hours from Birmingham and is one of the largest markets in the country.
It is also the wrong choice if you need many networks in one room. Thirty one presences across the whole state, spread over four cities, is a working ecosystem for enterprise workloads and is not an interconnection market. If cross connects are the point, go to Atlanta.
Ask whether the building is in TVA or Alabama Power territory and what that means for your rate and for any demand charges. Ask for committed and energised capacity separately from design capacity, and ask specifically what is available in the room rather than on the campus. Because the market leans on one operator, ask what happens to your pricing at renewal if you have no realistic alternative in the city, and get the renewal terms in the first contract rather than the second. If you are looking at Huntsville, ask directly about the second announced site, when it energises and whether your growth would sit there or where you are now.