Everstream announced on Tuesday that it's spending $27 million to expand its fiber network in the metro Milwaukee area ahead of next year's Democratic National Convention (DNC.)
The expansion includes two fiber rings that encircle the western suburbs and touch the western part of downtown Milwaukee. By the end of 2020, Cleveland-based Everstream's network will consist of more than 560 miles en route to creating a dense metro network covering the greater Milwaukee area. Everstream said the first 172 network miles would go live in November.
“Milwaukee was recently named one of the Top 50 Places to Start a Business by Inc. magazine and will soon host one of the largest gatherings held every four years — the Democratic National Convention,” said Everstream President and CEO Brett Lindsey, in a statement.
The Milwaukee network expansion also includes the construction of new small cell sites to provide high-bandwidth connectivity to the city and businesses. The small cell sites will also deliver the increased bandwidth and data required to support the upcoming DNC. The increased fiber capacities will also serve Everstream well during the rollout of 5G services throughout the area.
“These growing businesses and large-scale events need greater access to high-capacity fiber connectivity to be successful, and Everstream’s network was built from the ground up for businesses requiring reliability, speed and scale," Lindsey said. "Milwaukee companies are already excited to have access to another option for connectivity. This will provide these organizations, as they scale, with direct access to our more than 10,000 route miles of fiber and connections to dozens of data centers throughout the Midwest.”
The network will connect to a Milwaukee data center with access to another 36 data centers across the Midwest. Everstream also opened a new downtown office in Milwaukee that will grow to more than 20 new team members, including a sales team and engineers.
Everstream’s enterprise-grade network delivers a range of fiber-based services, including dedicated internet access, dark fiber, Ethernet and data center solutions, to businesses with low latency speeds of up to 100 Gbps.
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The fiber expansion in Milwaukee is one element of Everstream's ongoing footprint growth throughout select markets in the Midwest. Everstream said it was on track to grow to more than 15,000 route miles of fiber with more than 3,000 on-net locations in 12 markets throughout the Midwest by the end of next year.
With the larger network, Everstream's business customers can tap into more diverse network routes and direct connections to data centers and locations throughout the expanded footprint. AMP Capital, a global investment manager headquartered in Australia, bought Everstream last year.