a fairly large number - a bigger question is what happens to all the CO buildings once all the copper is turned down.
There is a huge opportunity about 5 years from now for edge datacenters. You have these buildings which have highly reliable power and connectivity, all thats needed is servers which can live in a NEBS environment.
Most of those CO's are in buildings that don't have all that much space in them, were built in the 40's and 50's, and likely aren't suitable for that kind of thing. Cooling would be a big deal.
I have been in ~15 CO's - there is tons of floor space in them, and the only thing telephone switching equipment has done since the 50's is shrink - beyond that, most existing CO buildings had expansions when electronic switching came about, because they couldnt add the new electronic (1/1A/5 ESS) without additional floor space. Cooling is noted by the requirement for NEBS compliant equipment.
Central offices are everywhere, too. You've driven or walked by any number of them, and the most you noticed was a Bell System logo. The downtown COs in big cities are on expensive real estate.
I want to know so badly what the telcos are still doing with all that space. Some, like mentioned above, are probably edge data centers. I imagine there's a lot of Internet infrastructure in them as well.
But even the biggest IXP is surely tiny compared to the space required for an electromechanical exchange (that would host human operators as well). Are there just floors and floors of empty space? Like you said, on very expensive downtown real estate?
There is a huge opportunity about 5 years from now for edge datacenters. You have these buildings which have highly reliable power and connectivity, all thats needed is servers which can live in a NEBS environment.