How streaming peaks, 5G densification, AI east-west workload gravity, and finance-grade determinism will reshape NYC metro capacity planning.

Executive Summary

Metro New York’s bandwidth trajectory through 2034 is no longer driven by “average growth” alone. Instead, it is shaped by structural shifts (e.g. streaming becoming the default viewing mode), persistent compounding (mobile data growth with expanding 5G adoption), and peak amplification (massive spikes on sports/event streaming days). The practical outcome is that network operators, hyperscalers, financial firms, and media platforms will likely require 3×–6× more protected metro and inter-data center capacity by 2034, depending on their traffic mix. Furthermore, true physical path diversity across the Hudson River and Manhattan corridors will become critical for resilience.

GIX is well-positioned for this coming cycle, with a fiber route running through a PATH Tunnel under the Hudson (Tunnel F) and rights to a second diverse tunnel, dual Points of Entry into 60 Hudson Street (via Worth St. and Thomas St.), direct connectivity to 165 Halsey Street in Newark, hardened infrastructure (including 16-ton flood-gate protection on the PATH tunnels), and new high-count fiber cabling engineered for long-term scaling.

What’s Changed Since the Prior Version (New Data Points)

1. Streaming is accelerating — and peaks are getting extreme. Streaming captured a record 47.5% of total U.S. TV viewing time in December 2025¹, and Christmas Day 2025 became the most-streamed day ever with 55.1 billion minutes of viewing². This real-world evidence of “event load” means metro networks must be engineered for traffic bursts, not just steady averages.
   
2. Fixed broadband usage continues to climb at scale. OpenVault’s latest data shows U.S. broadband users averaged 640.8 GB per month in Q3 2025, up 8.6% year-over-year³. Notably, their Q2 2025 report found 664.2 GB monthly average usage (13.4% YoY increase)⁴ – a surprisingly high figure for a spring quarter (which typically sees a slight dip). This suggests a structural rise in demand rather than seasonal variability.
   
3. Mobile data traffic growth remains high, and 5G’s share keeps expanding. According to Ericsson, global mobile network data traffic grew about 20% from Q3 2024 to Q3 2025, reaching roughly 188 exabytes per month in Q3 2025⁵. Ericsson also projects that 5G’s share of mobile data will rise from ~34% at end of 2024 to ~43% by end of 2025, on its way to about 83% of all mobile data by 2031⁶. In other words, fiber-fed 5G backhaul demand isn’t nearing saturation — continued coverage rollouts and increasing usage per user keep it on a strong growth curve. (Even by 2031, overall mobile data growth is expected to be in the mid-teens annually⁷.)
   
4. Global bandwidth demand stays strong — bolstering interconnection needs. Fresh TeleGeography research indicates that used international internet bandwidth surpassed 6.4 Pbps in 2024, reflecting a 32% compound annual growth rate from 2020–2024⁸. Separately, TeleGeography reported that global international bandwidth (all capacities) grew 23% in 2025 to reach 1,835 Tbps total, a four-year CAGR of ~24%⁹. While these metrics differ (one is used traffic, the other total capacity), both underscore that backbone and interconnection traffic is still expanding rapidly. Much of this growth continues to concentrate in top metro hubs like New York/New Jersey.
   

NYC Metro Demand Outlook Through 2034

The right way to forecast NYC now

Rather than applying a single average CAGR to forecast traffic, NYC network planners should model two concurrent growth curves:

• A) Baseline growth curve (steady-state): This captures the sustained year-over-year growth in “normal” demand. Key components:
  
  • Fixed broadband aggregation: ~8–15% annual growth (in line with recent OpenVault data showing ~8–13% YoY increases in average usage³⁴).
    
  • Mobile transport/backhaul: roughly mid-teens % growth, given current ~20% global mobile data growth trending down to ~14% by 2031 as 5G scales⁵⁷.
    
  • Inter–data center and interconnection corridors: on the order of 20–30% yearly growth, depending on cloud and media traffic mix (supported by TeleGeography’s ~24–32% growth indicators⁸⁹ for global bandwidth demand).
    
• B) Peak amplification curve (event-driven bursts): On top of the baseline, add ~25–60% headroom on critical metro segments to accommodate surges during major events or volatility spikes. For example, the record streaming minutes on Christmas Day 2025 demonstrate how traffic can far exceed normal levels on peak days². Similar considerations apply for market open volatility in finance or big AI data synchronization events. Networks must be built with considerable extra capacity and flexibility to handle these infrequent but extreme peaks.
  

Capacity envelope for 2034

Using the above growth ranges, most NYC metro networks should plan for at least 3×–5× increase in protected cross-Hudson capacity by 2034 (for a typical carrier & enterprise traffic mix). Footprints that include especially heavy media/CDN, cloud adjacency, or AI east-west traffic should plan for on the order of 4×–6× capacity growth in the same period to stay ahead of demand surges. This outlook underpins why the coming decade will favor infrastructure assets that offer the shortest river crossings, true physical route diversity, hardened installations, and plentiful fiber pairs (so that customers — not just the provider — can control how to scale up their bandwidth as needed).

Sector Forecasts That Matter in Metro NYC

Media & Streaming (CDN, studios, live sports, ad-tech)

Streaming’s share of viewership has hit unprecedented levels (47.5% of TV usage as of Dec 2025¹) and single-day streaming records continue to be broken². This implies more frequent peak traffic moments (e.g. big game streams, premiere nights) and higher sustained evening load on networks.

Engineering implication: Providers will need to pre-provision significant headroom and use physically diverse fiber paths between New Jersey data centers and Manhattan hubs. This ensures that when millions tune into a live event, the traffic can be carried without congestion and with fail-safe route diversity.

AI & Cloud (training clusters, inference serving, data gravity)

In the NYC metro, AI and big data workloads are gravitating to locations with large datasets, financial industry adjacency, and rich peering ecosystems. That means a lot of east–west data flows between New Jersey and Manhattan data centers as firms sync training data, feed models, and serve inference results close to users. These flows are becoming strategic traffic lanes.

Engineering implication: Deterministic routing and minimal jitter are critical for these AI workloads. Owning dark fiber between key sites becomes a performance advantage — it allows complete control over routing and latency. In practice, that means networks with route diversity and fiber quality (low latency, low attenuation) will be sought out for AI and cloud cluster interconnects.

5G & Edge (dense small cells, private 5G, FWA growth)

Mobile data in the region continues its strong climb (~20% YoY globally⁵) and 5G usage is rising toward the majority of all mobile traffic⁶. Meeting this demand in NYC means ongoing densification of cell sites and robust fiber backhaul to aggregate all the new small cells, enterprise 5G networks, and fixed wireless access nodes.

Engineering implication: Expect the need for more lateral fiber builds, more aggregation capacity, and more protected river crossings to ensure resiliency. Mobile operators will have to extend fiber deeper (to rooftops, street poles, and indoor DAS systems) and have redundant paths (especially across the Hudson) so that a single fiber cut doesn’t knock out large sections of 5G coverage.

Finance (HFT, market data, disaster recovery/BCP)

Financial institutions in NYC demand not just low latency but also provable path diversity and deterministic delivery of data. Networks supporting electronic trading, market feeds, and backup data replication must be ultra-resilient.

Engineering implication: Diverse Hudson River crossings, dual building entries, and even manhole-to-manhole route documentation have become mandatory for finance connectivity. Firms will scrutinize whether a network truly has physically separate routes (no single points of failure). For example, GIX’s design with two distinct Hudson tunnel paths and dual 60 Hudson entries is a direct response to these requirements, offering the kind of route transparency that financial customers now expect.

Why GIX is Built for the 2034 Metro Cycle

• Physical river diversity: GIX operates a Hudson River crossing via the PATH Transit Tunnel “F,” and it has secured rights to the parallel PATH Tunnel “E” for a fully diverse second route¹⁰. This dual-tunnel approach provides true physical redundancy under the river.
  
• Dual entry into 60 Hudson: The network has two separate Points of Entry into 60 Hudson Street — one via Worth Street (north side) and another via Thomas Street (southeast side)¹¹. By utilizing both entry points into NYC’s primary meet-me hotel, GIX ensures no single manhole or entry shaft failure can isolate the route.
  
• NJ-side interconnection gravity: On the New Jersey end, GIX directly reaches 165 Halsey Street in Newark, one of the region’s largest carrier hotels¹². This means customers can tie into the dense interconnection ecosystem at 165 Halsey without any intermediate hops — an important feature for low-latency and high-bandwidth requirements.
  
• Resilience: The Hudson tunnel fiber infrastructure is protected by massive 16-ton flood gates on both the New York and New Jersey sides¹³. These flood barriers (installed as part of the PATH tunnels’ post-Sandy hardening) safeguard the fiber route from flooding or storm surge, ensuring the network remains operational during extreme weather events.
  
• Future-ready scale: GIX built the route with state-of-the-art underground infrastructure, including custom-built manholes for expansion and secure, dual-locked lids¹⁴. The fiber itself is a brand-new Prysmian high-count cable with Corning SMF-28® Ultra glass fibers end-to-end¹⁵. This modern cable technology yields lower latency and attenuation, and it has far fewer splice points. In short, the GIX system was engineered with plenty of headroom to scale up capacity and deliver top performance for decades to come.
  

1. Reuters (Jan 20, 2026), “Streaming captures nearly half of US TV viewing in December on ‘Stranger Things’ boost” – Nielsen’s The Gauge report showed streaming accounted for 47.5% of total TV usage in the U.S. in December 2025. ↩ ↩²
   
2. Reuters (Jan 20, 2026), ibid. – The same Nielsen report noted that Christmas Day 2025 saw 55.1 billion streaming minutes (54% of all TV usage that day), the highest single-day streaming total on record. ↩ ↩² ↩³
   
3. OpenVault OVBI Report Q3 2025 (Nov. 12, 2025) – Average monthly data consumption in Q3 2025 was 640.8 GB per subscriber, an 8.6% increase from Q3 2024. ↩ ↩²
   
4. OpenVault OVBI Report Q2 2025 (Aug. 19, 2025) – Average usage in Q2 2025 reached 664.2 GB per subscriber, up 13.4% from 585.8 GB in Q2 2024 (a record high growth rate for a second quarter). ↩ ↩²
   
5. Ericsson Mobility Report (Nov 2025) – Global mobile network data traffic grew ~20% year-over-year between Q3 2024 and Q3 2025, reaching about 188 exabytes per month in Q3 2025. ↩ ↩² ↩³
   
6. Ericsson Mobility Report (Nov 2025) – Ericsson forecasts the share of mobile data carried over 5G will rise from ~34% at end of 2024 to ~43% by end of 2025, and about 83% by 2031. ↩ ↩²
   
7. Ericsson Mobility Report (Nov 2025) – Looking ahead, the annual growth rate of mobile data traffic is projected to moderate to around 14% year-on-year by 2031, with a ~16% CAGR over the 2025–2031 period. ↩ ↩²
   
8. TeleGeography Blog – “International Bandwidth Demand Surpasses 6.4 Pbps” (Alan Mauldin, May 12, 2025). New data showed a 32% CAGR in used international bandwidth from 2020–2024, with demand tripling over that period to exceed 6.4 Pbps of traffic. ↩ ↩²
   
9. TeleGeography Blog – “Total International Bandwidth Now Sits at 1,835 Tbps” (Paul Brodsky, Sept 23, 2025). Global internet bandwidth (capacity) grew 23% in 2025 to reach 1,835 Tbps, representing a 24% CAGR over the past four years. ↩ ↩²
   
10. CloudTweaks interview with GIX CEO Joe Falco (July 23, 2024) – GIX secured fiber installation in the southernmost PATH tunnel under the Hudson and also procured rights to the next southernmost PATH tunnel for a second future route. ↩
    
11. CloudTweaks interview (Joe Falco, 2024) – GIX built two diverse Points of Entry into 60 Hudson Street: one via a dedicated Worth Street entry (north side) and another via Thomas Street (SE side). GIX is the only carrier with a dedicated Worth St. entrance. ↩
    
12. DataCenter Dynamics (July 9, 2024), “Global InterXchange’s dark fiber route across Hudson River goes live in New York.” – The new dark fiber network links 60 Hudson St. (NYC) and 165 Halsey St. (Newark), marking the first such private Hudson River crossing in decades. ↩
    
13. Telecompetitor (Press Release, July 9, 2024), “First Dark Cable Route Across the Hudson River in 20 Years.” – The GIX Hudson crossing employs 16-ton flood gates on both sides of the Hudson River to secure the PATH tunnel infrastructure from flooding. ↩
    
14. Telecompetitor (July 9, 2024) – The GIX deployment includes state-of-the-art manhole systems with dual-locking lids for enhanced physical security along the route. ↩
    

Telecompetitor (July 9, 2024) – An end-to-end Prysmian fiber cable with Corning SMF-28® Ultra glass was used, minimizing splice points and boosting performance (lower latency, better signal integrity) on the GIX route. ↩