Choose the right delivery model
| Model | Typical scale | What the provider delivers | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Retail colocation | Cabinets to roughly 250 kW | Shared data hall, cabinets or cage, managed facility infrastructure | Smaller deployments and network-rich footprints |
| Private suite | 250 kW to 1+ MW | Dedicated room or hall with provider-operated infrastructure | Enterprise control without building a facility |
| Wholesale colocation | 500 kW to 5+ MW | Large dedicated capacity block, often with configurable distribution | Scaled infrastructure and predictable growth |
| Powered shell | 1 to 10+ MW | Building shell and delivered utility capacity; customer completes more fit-out | Teams with data center design and operating capability |
| Build-to-suit | 5+ MW | Purpose-built facility under a long-term commercial structure | Large, specialized and durable requirements |
What changes from 250 kW to 5 MW
Capacity for lease needs a dated delivery path
For operating capacity, verify usable IT kW, room or suite, cooling, electrical topology and the work needed to turn up service. For capacity under construction, document utility status, equipment procurement, commissioning milestones and the provider's contractual delivery obligation. Announced capacity without those details is not a dependable project option.
Commercial terms to normalize
- Committed usable IT kW, metering basis and power overage treatment
- Initial ramp, future ramp and take-or-pay milestones
- Base recurring charge, utility pass-through and PUE treatment
- One-time fit-out, distribution, security and commissioning charges
- Annual escalators, renewal pricing and early termination rights
- Adjacent expansion rights and consequences of a late future phase
- Cross-connect, carrier, cloud and remote-hands costs
- Service levels, maintenance rights and force majeure allocation
Build a wholesale capacity brief
Complete the fields to create a concise sourcing summary. The tool runs in your browser and does not transmit the information. Copy the result, then bring it to a call with a scout.
Compare four major markets
Ashburn
Exceptional network depth with very tight near-term availability and premium pricing.
Dallas
Large development pipeline and strong scale, with interconnection and prelease status to verify.
Atlanta
Rapid growth and East Coast reach, with immediate capacity tighter than long-term generation plans imply.
Chicago
Central geography and dense connectivity, with utility delivery timelines increasing the value of energized capacity.
Wholesale lease structure, term by term
At wholesale scale the rate is one line in a document that runs to dozens of pages, and the other lines routinely matter more. These are the terms that decide what you actually pay over a decade.
| Term | Market range | What to negotiate |
|---|---|---|
| Initial term, wholesale | 1 to 3 years, up to 10 to 15 | In constrained primary markets providers push 24 to 36 month minimums |
| Initial term, hyperscale | Typically 15 years | Usually with two or three 5-year extensions |
| Extension pricing | FMV or fixed strike | A fixed strike is worth real money in a rising market |
| Annual escalator | 2.5% to 5% | Fixed 2 to 3%, or CPI linked with a floor and a cap |
| PUE cap | Typically 1.3 to 1.4 | Above the cap, inefficiency is the landlord's cost, not yours |
| Secondary market terms | 12 months available | Often within 10 to 15% of long-term pricing |
Ranges are drawn from market and advisory reporting on 2026 lease structures rather than from a single published source, and vary by market, landlord and requirement size. Treat them as a negotiating reference, not a quote.
In a modified gross plus electric structure you pay for the power your equipment draws and a share of the facility overhead to deliver it. A PUE cap of 1.3 to 1.4 means the landlord absorbs the cost of running less efficiently than that. Without a cap, an ageing facility's declining efficiency becomes your operating expense for the length of the term. Ask for the cap, and ask how PUE is measured and how often it is reported.
How the economics change with size
Wholesale is not one product. The commercial structure shifts at recognizable thresholds, and knowing which band you are in tells you what leverage you have.
| Band | Structure | Typical leverage |
|---|---|---|
| Under 250 kW | Retail colocation, per cabinet or per kW | Little. You are a price taker on a rate card |
| 250 kW to 4 MW | Wholesale, per kW per month | Real. Term, ramp and escalator are all negotiable |
| 4 MW and above | Hyperscale, 10 to 15 year commitments | Lowest unit pricing, but the longest lock-in |
| Build to suit | Purpose-built, long term | Full specification control; now accepted as securitization-grade collateral |
The published reference point for the middle band is about $196.25 per kW per month for a 250 to 500 kW requirement in primary North American markets. The important trend is that pricing for 3 to 10 MW requirements rose 12.5% year over year, roughly double the rate of the smaller band. Large contiguous blocks are now the scarce product, so scale buys less discount than it did two years ago. Full sourcing is on the pricing benchmarks page.
Ramp schedules and what they really cost
Almost no tenant consumes its full commitment on day one. How the contract handles the gap between contracted and actual draw is one of the largest cash-flow variables in a wholesale deal, and it is frequently glossed over in a rate comparison.
- When billing starts: at handover, at a milestone, or on a fixed calendar date regardless of readiness.
- Whether there is a floor: many structures bill a minimum percentage of committed power from day one even if you draw nothing.
- Ramp steps: how quickly the billed floor rises, and whether steps are monthly, quarterly or annual.
- Whether unused capacity is protected: if you ramp slowly, can the landlord sell the headroom you are paying to reserve?
- Overage treatment: what you pay above committed draw, and whether it is metered or penalized.
- Expansion rights: a right of first refusal on adjacent capacity, and at what price it is struck.
A slower ramp with a low floor can be worth more than a lower headline rate, particularly on a deployment that phases over two years. Model the full term in cash, not in rate.
Normalizing two wholesale proposals
- Convert to cost per usable kW per month, not per cabinet, per rack or per square foot.
- Fix the power basis. Allocated, metered or usable IT load. Proposals frequently differ on this alone, and the difference can exceed the rate gap.
- Model the escalator to term end, including the compounding effect, and price a CPI-linked clause at both its floor and its cap.
- Price the ramp in cash, month by month, including any billing floor.
- Add every recurring extra: cross-connects, carrier ports, cloud on-ramps, remote hands and monitoring.
- Add one-time charges and amortize them across the term for a true monthly figure.
- Value the extension. A fixed strike against FMV is a material difference. Digital Realty reported renewal rents up 25.4% on a cash basis in Q2 2026, which is what FMV can mean in practice.
- Price the exit: termination rights, migration cost and any overlap during a move.
On wholesale deals the largest recoverable value is rarely the headline rate. It is the escalator, the extension strike price, the ramp floor and the PUE cap. Those four terms compound across a decade. A one-off concession does not.