July 2026 | Here's what's happened in the last month. (Reading time 4 minutes)
Data Centers, Everywhere
Of the events I've attended and presented at over the last two years, presentations on data centers and large language models (or AI, if you will) have 'hogged' more than half of the agenda.
This is not news to most of you, given the recent popularity of this infrastructure and the applications it is growing and enabling, with Google searches for AI data centers growing by 4,350% in the last 12 months alone.
I've leaned into this reality, noting in my presentations and conversations that without a resilient Internet, none of these topics would be being discussed or sustainable. And in an effort to know thy enemy and 'stay ahead of the game,' I started to look at the trends in data center development since 2020 via PeeringDB.
The initial insights aren't all that surprising: The USA accounts for nearly one in three data centers globally. However, there has been plenty of development in other countries, particularly India and Indonesia, which have seen more than 100% increases in the number of data centers since 2020. This has been a major factor in a significant increase in Asia's global market share.
However, Saudi Arabia claims the largest overall percentage increase in data centers over this period (1,000%), followed by the Philippines and Qatar (Table 1). Overall, 40 countries have seen a 100% increase in the number of data centers since July 2020, most of which are in Asia and Africa.
Internet Society Pulse and PICISOC are hosting a Day-0 event at the National Conference on Information Technology 2026 to explore the challenges and opportunities of measuring and strengthening the Pacific’s Internet resilience.
Internet Society Pulse is hosting a half-day collaborative forum event for Internet measurement researchers, journalists and policy makers to analyze the empirical successes, systemic limitations, and real-world experiences of underserved Internet users in rural, tribal, and marginalized urban communities across the United States.
In partnership with Internet Society Washington D.C Chapter, this intensive, interactive one-day workshop is designed specifically for the Internet measurement community to explore how data transitions from a server log to a policy brief or a news headline—and examine the systemic challenges, ethical dilemmas, and institutional pushback that happen along the way.
Internet Society Pulse is again sponsoring the annual TPRC conference, which connects research and decision-making to advance smarter communications policy.
Join us again, for three events across four days of collaborative and mindful Internet measurement research discussions.
Pulse Internet Measurement Fourm, Türkiye
Peering Research Day
Internet Data Trust Workshop
Stay tuned to our event page for details of our events in 2026. And email us at pulse@isoc.org if you’re interested in hosting, partnering, sponsoring, or presenting opportunities.
Pulse is so much more than data: It's the context, research, and community that makes sense of it through this newsletter, the Pulse Blog, and Pulse events.
To help us improve how we engage with you and our expanding community in 2026, we'd appreciate it if you could take 7 minutes to complete a survey. For your troubles, we're awarding another two USD 100 digital vouchers for the Internet Society swag shop.
DNSSEC and Security Workshop Call for Proposals is open until 18 september
Read
Cloudflare Radar's Q2 Internet disruption report shows a wide range of causes for disruptions included weather, earthquakes, power outages, government-directed shutdowns, DNSSEC misconfigurations, cable cuts, and more.
Email us to feature your news, events, reports, and stories pulse@isoc.org
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