Lancom Expands NetIX GR to Crete: Chania Welcomes its First Internet Exchange
London, October 21st 2025 – Capacity Europe: Lancom, Greece’s largest privately owned data center, cloud, and telecoms provider, today announced the expansion of NetIX GR into Chania, Crete, establishing the first-ever Internet Exchange on the island.
Launched in 2024 by Lancom with the support of NetIX’s Internet Exchange-as-a-Service (IXaaS) platform, NetIX GR has quickly become one of Southeast Europe’s fastest-growing IXPs. In less than a year, it has scaled across Athens and Thessaloniki, now counting almost 40 members, including global carriers such as Hurricane Electric, neutral interconnection leaders like Packet Clearing House, and prominent Greek operators including TI Sparkle Greece, Fibergrid - PPC, Hellenic Cable Networks, and Metadosis.
While NetIX globally interconnects 200+ members, across 220+ PoPs in 65 countries and more than 10,000 networks, the success of NetIX GR stands out even within this global footprint. By seamlessly blending Athens and Thessaloniki traffic, NetIX GR has already established itself as a critical regional peering fabric for ISPs, CDNs, hyperscalers, and content providers in Southeast Europe - enabling ultra-low latency, improved resilience, and significantly reduced interconnection costs.
With its expansion to Chania, Lancom and NetIX are taking a bold next step. For the first time, Crete’s networks will be able to peer locally while seamlessly exchanging traffic with peers in Athens and Thessaloniki over the same fabric. This decentralization brings Crete into the heart of Greece’s interconnection ecosystem and lays the foundation for a new regional digital gateway.
Crete is rapidly emerging as one of the Mediterranean’s most strategic digital gateways. Located at the intersection of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, the island has become a preferred landing point for a new generation of submarine cable systems that are reshaping global traffic routes. The convergence of subsea capacity, cable landing stations, new data centers, and now NetIX GR’s interconnection platform cements Crete’s role as a pivotal bridge between continents.
George Nolis, CEO of Lancom, commented:
“With NetIX GR, our vision has always been to decentralize interconnection in Greece and empower regional ecosystems. Bringing the first Internet Exchange to Chania is a historic milestone for Crete’s digital economy. Together with NetIX, we are ensuring Crete will no longer serve just as a transit point for submarine cables — it will become an active interconnection hub. Local ISPs, CDNs, hyperscalers, and enterprises can now meet at the exchange, unlock new opportunities, and keep traffic local while seamlessly accessing Greek and global networks. The upcoming Balkan Gate data center in Heraklion will complete our vision for Crete as a true digital gateway to Greece and Europe.”
Dean Belev, VP of Connectivity Services at NetIX, added:
“NetIX is proud to provide the IX-as-a-Service platform powering Lancom’s ambitious rollout of NetIX GR. The growth seen in Athens and Thessaloniki shows the strong demand for local and global interconnection in Greece. Expanding into Chania puts Crete firmly on Europe’s digital map, ensuring the entire region benefits from faster, cheaper, and more resilient connectivity.”
About Lancom
Lancom, the leading provider of data center, cloud, and telecoms services in Greece, owns and operates three state-of-the-art Data Centers in Athens and Thessaloniki, along with a proprietary Fiber Optic Network that spans across Greece with worldwide connections. Balkan Gate Thessaloniki, is the largest carrier-neutral Tier III data center in Northern Greece and is directly connected with major telecommunication providers in Greece and the Balkans. Lancom's recent investment in Crete will establish a dynamic telecommunications route in the wider region of the Balkans and the Southeastern Mediterranean.
About NetIX
Our next-generation network accelerates the Internet; we connect content creators with users faster, cheaper, and more directly than ever.
Our network stretches across more than 220 global data centres in 100+ cities in 65 countries. The NetIX platform connects our 200+ members to content from 10,000+ visible networks and 50+ Internet Exchanges and reaches daily peaks of more than 4Tb of traffic throughput.
NetIX offers the best possible internet connectivity: our members can directly exchange traffic with peers, giving their end-users faster page-load times on 90% of the most popular sites.
Our members include internet service providers, broadcasters, telecoms operators, and content delivery networks – all the peers your customers need to access!
