We know capacity before the market does
Colocation capacity has no listing service. Operators do not publish what is free, and no third party aggregates it, because the answer changes with the requirement. The same hall is available for 20 cabinets of standard air and unavailable for 300 kW of direct-to-chip. Publishing a number would commit an operator to a product it has not scoped, so operators quote against requirements instead.
Three consequences follow for a buyer. Calling operators one at a time takes weeks and produces answers written against different assumptions. The first operator you name yourself to sets the anchor for everyone who hears about it later. And capacity released quietly, from a customer who gave space back or a phase that came online early, reaches whoever is already asking, not whoever searches afterwards.
Using our deep network and close operator relationships, we hold knowledge of sites with capacity coming available inside the next twelve months. Operators prefer to work with us because Bridgepointe is their avenue to a great volume of customers nationwide. We are constantly finding new capacity at various prices and capacities. What we know varies by market and changes weekly, so we put your requirement to the wider market in parallel as well. Having a conversation with us costs nothing and we will work hard to find the site that you need in your timeline.
How recent must a confirmation be?
Capacity is requirement-specific and can change quickly. We show the date of the provider response whenever an option is presented as confirmed. Before a buyer relies on an option for a decision, we reconfirm material capacity, pricing and delivery details. A page-review date or market report date is not presented as facility verification.
If an option has not been confirmed for the buyer's current kW, density, cooling and date, it is labeled “provider confirmation required” or “pending,” not live.
What “available” means
Available means the provider has identified a specific operating space or credible future phase that can serve the defined requirement, subject to stated commercial and customer dependencies. The record should include footprint, usable power, density, cooling, redundancy, delivery, expansion status and quote validity.
Empty floor area, unused building capacity, utility capacity at a campus or a press release about future development does not qualify by itself.
A verified building is not verified availability
Our facility inventory is verified at the building. We have established that the site exists, who operates it, and whether it is operational, under construction or planned. That is a real check and it is not the same check as the one above.
It says nothing about whether space in that building can be sold to you. A verified building may be entirely full, pre-leased before it opens, or unable to serve your density at any price. Availability is confirmed one requirement at a time, by the operator, with a date attached, and until that happens a building on our list is a place to ask rather than an answer.
The two words are kept apart deliberately, because collapsing them is how a buyer ends up on a call believing a shortlist has been priced when it has only been located.
How usable kW is verified
- State the required continuous IT load and growth by date.
- Identify what the provider's quoted kW represents: circuit, UPS, reserved, metered or usable IT load.
- Confirm A/B topology, breaker loading, operating headroom and any diversity assumption.
- Verify that power can be concentrated across the actual rack layout.
- Record customer-side work, distribution equipment and commissioning requirements.
How cooling capability is classified
| Classification | What must be confirmed |
|---|---|
| Standard air | Sustained rack kW, supply conditions, airflow path and containment assumptions |
| Engineered high-density air | Rack concentration, containment, fan and return-air design, plus operating limits |
| RDHx-ready | Facility-water availability, temperatures, pressure, redundancy and ownership boundary |
| Direct-to-chip-ready | Primary and secondary loops, CDU, fluid, controls, leak response, commissioning and maintenance |
| Liquid-capable, design pending | The provider supports a liquid design in principle, but the buyer design has not passed engineering review |
How pricing is normalized
We separate recurring and one-time charges, then align proposals to the same usable IT kW, term and ramp. The comparison includes cabinet or suite cost, power basis, A/B design, bandwidth, cross-connects, remote hands, installation, utility or PUE pass-through, taxes when supplied, escalators and renewal treatment. Assumptions and exclusions remain visible.
Provider compensation and the limits of our reach
Our commercial model may include compensation from the provider selected by the buyer. Buyers should ask your scout about the relationship and compensation path for any shortlisted provider. A provider's willingness or ability to compensate us should not be treated as proof that it is the best technical or commercial fit.
This also bounds the claim on our homepage. Our access comes from agency relationships we hold directly, which are the same channel through which we are paid. That reach is wide and it is not universal. Where a provider outside it is a materially better fit for your requirement, we will name it and tell you plainly that we are not compensated on it. Those same relationships are how we hear about capacity before the market does, which means our advance knowledge stops at exactly the same edge our compensation does. That is why it never stands on its own: we ask a defined requirement across operators in parallel, without naming you, because operators answer requirements they will not answer a search engine.
When buyer details are shared
We can discuss a requirement in general terms before identifying the buyer. Buyer-identifying details should be shared with a provider only when needed to validate or quote an option and with the buyer's permission. The minimum practical information is used. Site visitors should also review the privacy notice.
How conflicts of interest are handled
- Separate verified facts from estimates, assumptions and provider marketing
- Disclose a material commercial relationship when it could affect the comparison
- Use the buyer's written requirements as the scoring baseline
- Show meaningful technical, delivery and commercial exceptions
- Include non-compensating options when they are known and materially better suited
- Let the buyer make the final provider decision
What buyers receive
A useful shortlist is not a directory export. It identifies the option, verification date, usable kW, density and cooling fit, delivery dependencies, expansion path, normalized recurring and one-time cost, and open questions. If a fact has not been confirmed, it remains labeled as unverified.
The specific claims we test
Most capacity claims are true in a narrow sense and misleading in practice. These are the ones we check, and what each check is designed to catch.
| Claim | What we confirm | The failure it catches |
|---|---|---|
| "We have capacity" | Usable IT kW at your density, in a named hall | Empty floor area with no deliverable power block |
| "Liquid cooled" | Installed loop, supply temperature, flow rate, CDU capacity per rack | A design capability that is not yet built |
| "Available now" | Energized power today, not a queue position | Capacity contingent on a utility date years out |
| "Supports 50 kW racks" | Sustained limit for your contiguous footprint, not the building ceiling | A per-rack figure that does not hold across a whole cage |
| "Delivery in Q3" | Contractual date, dependencies and remedies if it slips | A construction milestone presented as a commitment |
| "Carrier neutral" | Carriers actually lit in that building, and cross-connect cost | A carrier list that reflects the campus, not your hall |
Interconnect queues now run four to six years in Northern Virginia, and some Chicago projects face dates out to 2031 or later. A provider holding energized capacity and a provider holding a queue position are selling different products, and they can quote similar rates. This is the single most consequential thing to verify, and the one most easily lost in a rate comparison.
What we will not do
A verification policy is only meaningful if it also says what it refuses. These are ours.
- We do not present announced pipeline as deliverable capacity. Announcements are useful evidence about where a market is heading and are not inventory you can contract for.
- We do not publish an option as live before the provider confirms usable power, cooling fit and delivery path for your specific requirement.
- We do not invent pricing where none is published. Where a market has no published asking-rate band, our pages say so rather than substituting an estimate. See the pricing benchmarks page, where markets without a published figure are marked as not published.
- We do not present modeled ranges as operator quotes. Planning bands on market pages are labeled as planning data with the method stated.
- We do not resolve conflicting sources silently. Where published figures disagree, we cite one, show the conflict and explain the choice.
- We do not shortlist on a single provider's word about a competitor.
- We do not publish a list of available capacity. Availability is requirement-specific and expires, so any list would be wrong by the time you read it. We state availability against your requirement, with the date it was confirmed.
How a claim moves from unverified to verified
- Requirement first. Committed kW, density per rack, cooling method, redundancy, required date, network needs and compliance scope. Without these, no capacity claim can be tested.
- Anonymized market sweep. Providers are asked against the requirement without naming you, so early pricing is not anchored to your identity or urgency.
- Written technical confirmation. Usable kW in a named hall, sustained density, cooling method as installed, and floor loading.
- Delivery path confirmation. Energized or queued, serving substation, contractual date, dependencies and remedies.
- Pricing normalization. Every response restated as cost per usable kW per month over the full term, with all recurring and one-time charges included.
- Benchmark check. The normalized result compared against published figures, so you can see whether a bid is competitive with the market or only with the other bid.
- Dated record. Each option carries the date it was last confirmed, because a confirmation has a shelf life in a 1.4% vacancy market.
Vacancy in primary North American markets reached a record low of 1.4% at the end of 2025, and Northern Virginia sits at 0.3%. In conditions that tight, capacity confirmed six weeks ago may be committed. We date every confirmation and re-verify before a shortlist goes to a decision rather than treating an earlier answer as current.
What you can audit
You should be able to check our work. For any option we present, you can ask for and receive the following.
- The date the capacity was last confirmed, and by whom at the provider.
- The usable IT kW figure and whether it is allocated, metered or usable load.
- The sustained density limit for your footprint and the cooling method as installed.
- Whether power is energized today, and if not, the contractual date and its dependencies.
- The normalization workings behind every price we quote, line by line.
- The published benchmark each price was compared against.
- Any commercial relationship we hold with the provider.
If we cannot produce those for an option, it does not belong on a shortlist, and we will say so rather than presenting it with a caveat.
Ask for a shortlist you can audit.
Bring the actual requirement and we will show what is confirmed, what is estimated and what still needs provider engineering.