Why we run our own edge
Most “EU clouds” are a control panel in front of someone else's hyperscaler. We went the other way — our own hardware, in Europe, governed entirely by EU law.
There's a quiet sleight of hand in a lot of "European cloud" marketing: a tidy
control panel and a .eu domain, sitting in front of a US hyperscaler's
region. The data lives on someone else's platform, under someone else's
jurisdiction, behind someone else's terms of service.
We didn't want to build that. So Digital Frontier runs its own edge across Europe.
What "our own edge" actually means
Concretely, our provider nodes are two things, and we're specific about which is which:
- Hardware we own, operated in colocation — currently at Oni.DC in Lisbon, Portugal.
- Dedicated servers we lease and have hosted by subcontracted European operators — currently Hetzner (Helsinki) and AlphaVPS (Sofia).
Both modes are under EU control, end to end. Where the local grid allows, we favour datacentres running on 100% renewable energy.
We name our subcontractors on purpose. "Sovereign" only means something if you can say where the machines are and who operates them.
Live today vs. in preview
We try hard not to over-claim, so here's the honest split:
| Surface | Status |
|---|---|
| Akash-compatible console + API | Live — the path we recommend today |
| Latitude.sh-compatible API | Preview — not yet production-ready |
If you want to deploy right now, the Akash Console is the live path. The fuller Digital Frontier console and the Latitude.sh-compatible surface are still evolving, and we'll say so plainly until they aren't.
Why it matters
Owning the substrate is more work than reselling capacity. But it's the only way to make a real promise about jurisdiction, operators and energy — instead of a promise about a logo. That trade is the whole point.
More field notes soon.