Pricing benchmarks / Public sector

What the US government pays for colocation.

Federal contracts publish their rates. That makes government pricing the only colocation pricing in the country you can look up by contract number, per cabinet, per cross-connect, per hour of remote hands.

Researched July 2026

Iron Mountain's GSA schedule: rates by fiscal year

Iron Mountain holds GSA Multiple Award Schedule contract GS-03F-049GA under SIN 518210 ERM, Federal Data Center Colocation Services, running through March 9, 2027. The published price list sets rates for each government fiscal year in advance, so the current year's number is a matter of public record rather than negotiation folklore.

Published schedule ratesContract GS-03F-049GACurrency: USD
ConfigurationGFY2025GFY2026
4.99 kW FISMA-High cabinet, Boyers PA$1,840.74/mo$1,895.96/mo
4.99 kW FISMA-High cabinet, Northborough MA$1,879.71/mo$1,936.10/mo
14.40 kW cabinet$4,415.17/moRising to $5,065.80 by GFY2027
80 kW cage$22,370.19/moRising to $25,666.74
2,000 kW$507,744.52/moRising to $582,567.46

The cabinet specification, in the contract's own words: FISMA High, cabinet with two 208V 30A circuits (A and B feed), 4.99 kW maximum electrical consumption against a 6.24 kW rating. That is a real, comparable spec, which is what makes these numbers useful as a benchmark.

Source: Iron Mountain GSA price list, Modification 0061, rate tables at pages 141 to 147. Contract status confirmed active in GSA eLibrary. These are published schedule rates, not transaction prices: a task order can be negotiated below schedule.

Nine carriers, one identical rack spec

GSA's Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions vehicle (GS00Q17NSD3000) publishes awarded unit prices for Colocated Hosting Service by vendor. Every price below buys the same defined thing: a full rack of six shelves at 72 by 19 by 32 inches, including basic power, for the year running October 1, 2025 to September 30, 2026.

VendorFull rack, monthlyInstall, one-time
MetTel$1,147.02$2,294.07
Comcast$1,282.36$2,552.03
L3Harris$1,322.21$2,453.34
AT&T$1,359.61$2,180.32
Verizon Federal$1,400.48$2,460.92
BT Federal$1,456.18$2,452.49
AOC Connect$1,512.81$2,577.06
Granite$1,542.73$2,577.06
Lumen$1,614.37$1,720.56

Same specification, same buyer, same year, and a 41% spread between the cheapest and most expensive vendor. The prior year is published too, which shows the escalation directly: AT&T was $1,329.11 and MetTel $1,121.29 in the FY2025 band. Note also that the vendor with the highest monthly rate has the lowest install charge, which is exactly the tradeoff a normalized comparison is supposed to catch.

Source: GSA EIS Public Pricer, CLIN CH12003 (monthly) and CH11003 (install).

Cross-connects, circuits and remote hands

The extras are where quotes diverge most, and both vehicles price them explicitly.

ItemPublished rateVehicle
Cross-connect$122.96 eachIron Mountain GSA, GFY2026
Fiber cross-connect, monthly$44.46 to $688.22EIS, AT&T low, Lumen and Granite high
Twisted-pair cross-connect, monthly$19.65 to $46.62EIS
Dark fiber, one pair$6,830.91Iron Mountain GSA, GFY2026
Remote hands, hourly$157.11/hrIron Mountain GSA, GFY2026
120V circuit and install$391.29 one-timeIron Mountain GSA, GFY2025
208V single-phase circuit and install$523.92 one-timeIron Mountain GSA, GFY2025
208V three-phase circuit and install$656.56 one-timeIron Mountain GSA, GFY2025

The fiber cross-connect line deserves a second look: fifteen times the price from the most expensive vendor to the cheapest, for a physically identical connection. On a deployment with a dozen cross-connects that single line item outweighs the difference in rack rate.

How government rates compare to commercial pricing

Set the public numbers beside the commercial ones on our colocation pricing page and the picture is consistent rather than contradictory.

  • Equinix reported average monthly recurring revenue of $2,538 per cabinet in Q2 2026. The federal 4.99 kW cabinet at $1,895.96 sits below that, which fits: Equinix's average includes far denser and more interconnected deployments.
  • Published commercial list prices for a full cabinet run roughly $600 to $2,325 depending on metro and power. The EIS band of $1,147 to $1,614 lands inside it.
  • Government pricing is not automatically cheaper. It is knowable, which is the actual advantage. A quote you can compare against a published federal rate for a defined spec is a quote you can argue with.
How to use this in a negotiation

Ask your provider to quote the same defined configuration the federal contracts use: a full cabinet with dual 208V 30A A/B circuits at roughly 5 kW, cross-connects priced per connection, and remote hands at an hourly rate. Then compare like for like against the numbers above.

What the public record does not contain

Honesty about the gaps matters more than a longer table.

  • No public sector per-kW or per-square-foot rate exists. On EIS, 15 of the 41 Colocated Hosting line items are Individual Case Basis with no published price, and they are precisely the ones that would yield those rates: non-basic power, custom build-out, SCIF space, per-cabinet and per-cage items.
  • Federal award records carry no unit pricing. SAM.gov contract data became the sole public federal award repository when GSA decommissioned the public FPDS site and ezSearch on February 24, 2026. It publishes agency, vendor, contract number, dates and aggregate dollars, with no unit price, quantity or line-item detail.
  • State and local records are usually silent on price. Tarrant County, Texas lists the value of its colocation contract as "Per Contract Terms." Pennsylvania Treasury's colocation RFP publishes the full rate structure with every dollar field blank.

Named public sector colocation contracts

Useful for seeing who buys colocation and from whom, even where pricing is withheld.

BuyerVendorRecordPricing published
FAA, William J. Hughes Technical CenterEquinix692M15-26-C-00003, posted May 11 2026, firm-fixed-price, five-year termNone. Notice of intent to award, sole source. The FAA states it will migrate colocation customers to cloud within the term.
Tarrant County, TexasCyrusOne LLCRFP F2026030, Amendment No. 1 before Commissioners Court May 12 2026None. Value reads "Per Contract Terms."
Pennsylvania TreasuryOut to bidRFP25-002, issued May 9 2025, four-year term targeted to start February 28 2026Rate structure and specs only, no dollars. Requires quotes on 48U cabinets, 208V 30A dual-feed circuits, cross-connects and bandwidth tiers.
Department of Veterans AffairsIron MountainTask order riding GS-03F-049GAYes, indirectly: the underlying schedule rates above.

Records verified at SAM.gov, the Tarrant County public notice portal, and Pennsylvania Treasury RFP25-002. Historically the FAA bought colocation as a subcontracted line item under FAA Cloud Services contract DTFACT-15-D-00003 (General Dynamics IT, 2015), with Equinix as subcontractor, which is why no per-cabinet rate appears in the prime award record.

Benchmark your quote against a published rate.

Send the configuration and the number you were given. We will normalize it against these federal rates and current commercial market bands, then tell you where it actually sits.

Every figure on this page links to the primary document it came from. Read the verification policy.