AWS Interconnect - last mile Enters Preview With Equinix: Free 1 Gbps in Two US Regions, Four Redundant Links, MACsec Only Between AWS and Equinix Edge Devices, and No Statement on Whether the 99.99% SLA Applies in Preview

On November 4, 2026, AWS announced in What's New that AWS Interconnect - last mile is now available in preview with Equinix. The announcement says you can connect your infrastructure across Equinix's global network of 282 data centers to AWS in a few clicks. It offers managed, private and resilient connections, so you do not have to order cross-connects or configure routers. It is a preview, not a general release, so limits and prices may change before general availability.

To create a connection, you choose an AWS Region, a bandwidth speed, a Direct Connect gateway and your Equinix Fabric One project ID in the AWS Management Console. AWS generates an activation key that you enter in the Equinix Fabric One portal to finish setup, and you can also start from the Equinix Fabric One portal. AWS and Equinix set up quad-redundant capacity in advance, across two locations and four separate links, with BGP peering, VLANs and ASNs configured for you. The announcement says every connection is built for maximum resilience and comes with a 99.99% availability SLA, and that traffic between AWS and Equinix edge devices is encrypted with MACsec by default. It does not say whether the 99.99% SLA applies during the preview, and the MACsec statement covers the segment between AWS and Equinix edge devices, so whether the first mile from your site to Equinix is encrypted is not addressed.

The preview terms are specific. You can order 1 Gbps Interconnect - last mile connections at no charge, in only two places: the US West (N. California) Region through the San Jose metro, and the US East (N. Virginia) Region through the Northern Virginia metro. Only when the service becomes generally available will you be able to scale bandwidth from 1 Gbps to 100 Gbps in the console. You can create connections with the console, the AWS CLI or the API, and partners can integrate using the open API package on GitHub. The announcement gives no price for general availability and no date.

The Getting started page of the AWS Interconnect User Guide adds the procedure and the prerequisites, but it is documentation for all last mile partners, and its example partner is Lumen, so it is not specific to Equinix. The prerequisites are an AWS account with suitable IAM permissions for Direct Connect and Interconnect, a Direct Connect gateway (an existing one or one created during setup) as the attach point, an existing relationship with a last mile partner, and customer premises equipment at your remote site connected to the partner's connectivity fabric. In planning you decide between a Virtual Private Gateway, a Transit Gateway and Cloud WAN, where the first two are Regional services and Cloud WAN is global, and you check existing IP allocations for conflicts. The guide lists bandwidth tiers of 1, 2, 5, 10, 25, 50 and 100 Gbps. That does not contradict the 1 Gbps limit in the preview, because the preview limit is stated in the announcement.

The guide describes setup from two directions. Starting in AWS, you open Last mile Interconnect in the Direct Connect console, choose Create new last mile Interconnect, pick the partner and the nearest Interconnect metro, name the connection, choose the bandwidth and the Direct Connect gateway, and enter the partner account ID, which may be an email address, as with Lumen, or an alphanumeric string. AWS then shows an activation key to use in the partner portal. Starting in the partner portal instead, you choose Accept last mile Interconnect in the AWS console, paste the activation key, name the connection, pick the Direct Connect gateway and finish. The guide says a connection typically becomes operational within the timeframe given when you request it, and provisioning status can be followed in the Direct Connect console. These steps are the generic partner procedure, so for Equinix the announcement's Fabric One project ID and portal are what apply.

The guide also explains that the Interconnect metro you select determines the AWS Region, which is where AWS and the partner have collocated infrastructure and where your traffic enters the AWS network. After you submit the request, the service provisions four connections between four router pairs across two distinct last mile sites, configures BGP, VLANs and ASNs automatically, enables 256-bit MACsec by default, and provides end-to-end monitoring of availability, health, latency and packet loss. Other details: IPv4 and IPv6 are supported, BGP is used for dynamic routing and its details are handled for you, the MTU is set automatically to 8500 so jumbo frames are on by default, the first-mile options depend on what the partner offers, such as Ethernet and MPLS, and a last mile Interconnect can attach to a Direct Connect gateway that already has private or transit virtual interfaces.

Taken together, the two official texts establish some facts and leave gaps. It is a preview, free 1 Gbps is available only in two metros in two US Regions, the design is four links across two sites, and MACsec is on by default between devices. Not stated are whether the preview has an SLA, the price and date of general availability, whether the first mile is encrypted, and which partners exist beyond Equinix and the Lumen example. A team evaluating adoption should test real traffic on the free 1 Gbps connection and ask AWS to confirm the support and SLA terms that apply in preview.