United Fiber & Data enters low latency network game

United Fiber and Data (UFD), an emerging fiber-centric service provider, on Thursday unveiled plans to build a fiber network that will offer a new low-latency path from the New York City metro area to Ashburn, Va., a major Internet peering point.

Over this network, UFD will offer three main services--dark fiber, colocation and data center--to both service providers and industry verticals such as healthcare, education and the financial trading industry.

UFD, which was founded in 2009, has completed all of the necessary planning and secured rights of way along the network route, which is set to begin the first phase of construction this week.

Upon completion, UFD's privately-owned network will provide a DWDM-based network that it says will be able to deliver services of up to 100 Gbps.

Along this route, the 300-mile network will interconnect with a number of the key data center, carrier interconnect and financial trading locations in the New York/New Jersey and northern Virginia areas.

In between New York and Ashburn, the network will also incorporate diverse routes through New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland, while bypassing the congested I-95 route. Instead, the network will pass through the central Pennsylvania cities of Allentown, Reading, Lancaster and York. On its way to Ashburn, the network will also pass through Frederick, Md.

Although UFD will have to go head-to-head with other well-established providers like Sidera, the company said its approach to laying fiber cables is a differentiator. In addition to taking advantage of the latest network and optical technology, UFD said its network is "diverse to the single points of failure."

Funding for this new network is coming from multi-platinum band +LIVE+.

For more:
- see the release

Special report: Fiber to the Tower - Top wireline technologies in 2013

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