CenturyLink expands fiber infrastructure in Michigan to help enable autonomous vehicles

In order to better service the autonomous vehicle tech corridor, CenturyLink has completed a 33-mile fiber ring in Troy, Michigan. The fiber-ring in Troy is part of CenturyLink's initiative to provide more fiber to edge network locations.

RELATED: CenturyLink draws up its playbook for edge compute services

In August, CenturyLink announced its blueprint for edge compute services. CenturyLink has booted up more than 106 initial edge compute locations across the U.S. to provide a range of managed services and hybrid cloud solutions to its customers. The edge compute services blend compute, storage and networking capabilities into one package.

CenturyLink's edge compute services include 5 millisecond transport time from its existing locations to the edge, which is ideal for low latency applications such as virtual reality, augmented reality, machine learning, Internet of Things and artificial intelligence (AI.)

“This network investment in the technology infrastructure will deliver game-changing advantages and accelerate the innovations being undertaken by the Troy business community,” said Tim Wood, general manager, CenturyLink, in a statement. “We understand the importance of a secure and reliable network that delivers faster connections to support the evolution of business, not only for Troy, but globally.”

RELATED: CenturyLink's Dugan puts an edge on cloud strategy and MEF's LSO Sonata

During last week's MEF19 conference in Los Angeles, CenturyLink CTO Andrew Dugan spoke to FierceTelecom about cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google needing access to telco provider's edge locations in order to provision their services.

"From a connection standpoint, when we then go talk about the edge compute at those 106 locations, the cloud providers are interested in talking to us about distributing their cloud experience to those locations," Dugan said. "When we talk about edge compute, what we make available in those 106 locations will span a wide range of services."