A couple of days ago, a fiber line was damaged in Zaventem, near Brussels.

The damage was near one of our data centers. It had nothing at all to do with us, we weren’t infected.

But when the news broke, the press still called us.

Talking to my colleagues of other data centers worldwide, in the European Data Center Association, it seems this is the case everywhere.

We have three data centers, on different sides of the biggest Belgian cities. We invest millions constantly upgrading our infrastructure, technology, security, and other facilities. We have 39 operators offering connections in our data centers. Every fiber connection comes into our buildings by two entries, and we even have two meet-me-rooms, to make sure every potential problem in the data center is catered for.

Why is it that no one is ever surprised that we’re ‘up’ all the time, but that, when a carrier has a problem – independently from us – it’s the data center that gets the bad coverage?

We provide the infrastructure of the digital economy. If we, data centers, were to go on strike, web shops and companies worldwide would come to a standstill. No internet connections, no clouds provided, no hosting without us.

I suggest we install a national day of the data center. A day on which we celebrate that data centers are serving their customers around the clock. With not so much as a split second of any failure whatsoever, months and years on end…

Can we have some positivity and recognition, please?