November 2, 2026 by Hayley Levine

Tourists from around the world flock to Amsterdam to see its windmills and tulip fields. Businesses come to Amsterdam for a different reason: to connect their networks in one of the five cities that make up FLAP-D (Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Dublin), Europe’s tier-one data center hubs. Cogent has had a presence in Amsterdam since 2004. We connect in 33 carrier-neutral data centers and operate our own data center in Halfweg.

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Global brands such as Heineken, Philips, and Booking.com call Amsterdam home, and all three keep their headquarters in the city. Amsterdam also anchors the Dutch financial sector, with ING Group, ABN AMRO, and Euronext Amsterdam based here.

The Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX) is one of the world’s largest internet exchanges and a pillar of digital infrastructure in both the city and the Netherlands as a whole. KPN, the country’s national telecom operator, has a major presence in Amsterdam, though its headquarters sit in nearby Rotterdam.

The need for data center capacity keeps growing with the rise of AI development and the migration of storage to the cloud. Amsterdam felt that pressure early. In 2019, the city and neighboring Haarlemmermeer put a temporary moratorium on new data center development because the industry’s demands on power and space had outgrown what the region could support. The moratorium lifted in 2020, but major restrictions came with it. New facilities could only go in designated areas and had to meet strict energy-efficiency requirements, and later rules blocked hyperscalers from building their own campuses in the region.

These limits pushed facilities to find new ways to give customers the capacity they need. Cogent’s answer is higher power capacity for customers whose business needs call for higher density. Halfweg is the only Cogent data center that offers it, with up to double the power of our standard solution.

Amsterdam is a key market that connects England with continental Europe via Cambridge. It also provides routes to local Dutch markets such as Zwolle, Rotterdam, and Groningen; as well as major European markets like Paris and Frankfurt.

Business capacity and transport needs keep evolving, and Amsterdam remains a staple connectivity hub for Europe and the world. Connect your business in this historic city with Cogent.

About the Author:
Hayley Levine is a Communications Specialist that works with technically-versed and business-minded individuals who support our global customer base. She highlights how Cogent’s set of products and services can address customer challenges from her involvement in customer conversations