Dark and lit fiber provider Sidera upped the 100 MB to 100 GB services available to customers in the Chicago area, announcing Wednesday that it has extended its network to three data centers in Elk Grove, Ill., a major data hub for financial and content service providers.
The new expansion not only improves high-performance network connectivity for Sidera customers but also puts Sidera on the next step toward its planned completion of a fiber ring stretching from Chicago to Elk Grove, down to Aurora, Ill., and back to Chicago. The network interconnects three major data center facilities in Elk Grove--Equinix (CH3), DuPont Fabros Technology (CH1) and Savvis (CH3).
Financial services providers, among the biggest takers of dark and lit fiber services from providers like Sidera, have in recent years been joined by content providers, media services and cloud service providers in need of reliable, low-latency network connectivity to meet their customers' needs.
Clint Heiden, Sidera's president, noted that Chicago's central location between the East and West Coasts makes it an important market for high-speed services. "This expansion enhances Sidera's network capabilities within the Chicago-metro market to deliver unparalleled high-performance connectivity not just to Chicago and Aurora, where we have network today, but also to data center parks such as Elk Grove and Wood Dale," he said in a release.
Elk Grove is the largest consolidated business park in North America.
The continued expansion of Sidera's high-speed network speaks to the value Berkshire Partners finds in it as well as Lightower Fiber Networks. The equity firm acquired both companies in late December 2012 for $2 billion and plans to merge the two. The deal is expected to be completed in Q2 2013.
For more:
- see the release
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