Bandwidth IG is just months away from completing its network of 310 miles of dark fiber in the San Francisco Bay Area to help meet an increasing demand for data center space and power. The network also includes what the company claims is the first marine cable laid in over 20 years under the San Francisco Bay.
Expected to be completed by the second quarter of this year, Bandwidth IG’s dark fiber network will ultimately connect to around 75 data centers.
Bandwidth IG has long pitched its dark fiber as an alternative to big name rivals. This week, CEO Bruce Garrison called the infrastructure critical in an age “where everything we do sits in a data center.” In an interview with Fierce Telecom, he said the new network was built to provide the most direct route from data center to data center in order to reduce latency and the number of splice points.
While the company built, owns and will operate the dark fiber infrastructure, it won’t light any services itself. Instead, Bandwidth IG’s part in operating the network mostly entails maintenance if the physical infrastructure is damaged. “We're not a carrier. We are an infrastructure provider. Anything that happens on top of the fiber is up to the customer," explained Garrison.
Data center operators and the customers who occupy those spaces, including hyperscalers and other high-bandwidth-using enterprise clients, can buy a pair or many pairs of dark fiber between two data centers on the Bandwidth IG network. Typically, dark fiber is leased in pairs, with common quantities being two, four or eight strands.
But a Zayo executive said in October that it's been seeing demand for more fiber strands. For example, Zayo has been getting asks for 144 strands of long-haul fiber.
Ninety percent of Bandwidth IG's San Francisco network is brand new infrastructure built over the last three years. The rest comes from Bandwidth IG’s March 2020 acquisition of Silica networks – which was “a very small amount of fiber in the ground, just in Santa Clara,” according to Garrison.
Of the project as a whole, he noted it was a “very rigorous process” that involved over 100 individual permits. Bandwidth IG, backed by private equity from Columbia Capital and SDC Capital, doesn't disclose the dollar amount invested in its networks.
The company will continue constructing more fiber, with another 150 miles planned this year, "largely concentrated" in its Georgia market. But there is still more construction to come in the San Francisco Bay Area, too, as demand continues to grow. “Generally, when someone buys dark fiber, they don't buy less later. They only buy more,” added Garrison.
Bandwidth IG lays cable under the bay
To create a direct path for connectivity between San Francisco and the East Bay area, Bandwidth IG constructed a new subsea route under the San Francisco Bay. The submarine cable connects Great Oaks and Santa Clara, up the East Bay and Peninsula, and ties into downtown San Francisco.
Garrison said that since most networks along the bay were completed decades ago, they have reduced capacity, with a smaller number of dark fiber strands available. Bandwidth IG’s network includes multiple conduits with 1,728 fibers in each conduit, a higher fiber count than that of many older networks.
Another motive for building the submarine cable is that incumbent networks in the area share the same bridge attachments or routes along different bridges or the public transportation system BART. The Bandwidth IG network deviates from that path. There was a need for something completely "unique and diverse at a much higher fiber capacity," said Garrison.
*** Editor's note 1/24/23: An earlier version of this article referenced "Bandwidth," which is a separate entity from Bandwidth IG. The company's name has since been updated to "Bandwidth IG" in those instances.