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Michael Collado is looking for a cheap hotel.
No, he doesn't want the kind of place that rents rooms by the hour or charges extra for clean towels. He wants the kind that features enough electrical power to light the state of Rhode Island, floors that will support a 5-ton backup generator, and ceilings high enough to accommodate 14-foot-tall racks of electronic equipment.
"I'm looking for space that has very specific attributes," concedes the chief executive of Extranet Telecommunications Inc., a Manhattanbased company that specializes in housing and maintaining equipment for other telcos.
Unfortunately, he knows it will be hard to find. "The market for that space is very competitive right now," says Mr. Collado. "In fact, it's out of control."
Fed by a boom in the sheer number of telecommunications companies, not to mention their size, the industry's space needs and the price of that space are both soaring.
Through mid-September, those companies leased some 800,000 square feet of space in Manhattan, up...