Data Centers in Massachusetts

Massachusetts – Premier Northeast Connectivity Hub

Executive Summary

Massachusetts is a top-tier North American data center market, serving as the primary connectivity and colocation hub for New England. It is the ideal choice for enterprises in finance, healthcare, and research requiring low-latency access to both the dense regional population and transatlantic cable systems. The state's mature infrastructure ensures high-speed performance for mission-critical applications connecting to US and European markets.

Massachusetts: At A Glance

Network & Connectivity Ecosystem

Carrier Density & Carrier Neutrality With approximately 44 unique network providers operating in the state as of September 2025, Massachusetts offers a competitive and resilient connectivity landscape. The market is dominated by carrier-neutral facilities, primarily in the Boston area, providing extensive choice for interconnection, transit, and private network services.

Direct Cloud On-Ramps The market features over 1 direct cloud on-ramp, enabling access to 4 cloud regions as of September 2025. Low-latency, private connections are available to major cloud providers, including:

• AWS
• Google Cloud (GCP)

Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) The primary public peering point is the Boston Internet Exchange (Boston IX), which facilitates efficient traffic exchange between major content networks, ISPs, and enterprises. Most large-scale peering is conducted privately within the region's major colocation facilities.

Bare Metal Bare metal server capacity is readily available from multiple providers in the Boston metropolitan area. Options include global providers such as phoenixNAP and Hivelocity, offering dedicated servers for high-performance computing and single-tenant applications.

Power Analysis

Average Cost Of Power Industrial electricity rates in Massachusetts range from 9.89–10.25 ¢/kWh as of October 2025. This rate is higher than the national average, making power a significant operational cost to factor into total cost of ownership models for large deployments. The state's power mix is primarily natural gas, with a substantial and growing solar energy component.

Power Grid Reliability The power grid serving the primary data center clusters around Boston is well-engineered and reliable. Data centers in this area benefit from redundant power feeds and support from multiple substations, ensuring high levels of uptime for critical infrastructure.

Market Access, Business & Tax Climate

Proximity To Key Business Districts Data centers in Massachusetts are strategically located to serve Boston's financial district, the Route 128 technology corridor, and the world-class academic and biotechnology institutions in Cambridge. This proximity is essential for applications requiring minimal latency, such as financial trading, medical research, and cloud services.

Regional Market Reach Massachusetts is the digital gateway to the six New England states, a region with a significant population and diverse economy. Its location also makes it a key aggregation point for network traffic flowing between the Eastern United States, Canada, and Europe via subsea cables.

Tax Advantage For Data Centers Massachusetts provides a sales and use tax exemption for equipment purchased for qualifying data centers. This incentive directly lowers the significant capital expense required for deploying or upgrading critical infrastructure.

Natural Disaster Risk

Massachusetts has a high-risk profile, with a FEMA National Risk Index score of 92.68 as of September 2025. While facilities are engineered to mitigate these factors, operators must plan for specific regional threats.

The primary natural hazards include hurricanes, severe winter weather (including ice storms), riverine flooding, strong winds, and coastal storm surges. Careful site selection and facility hardening are standard practices to ensure operational continuity.