USA Fiber continued its high-speed romp into the Ashburn, Virginia data center region, announcing that it is one of just a few competitive providers to qualify for a Resource Sharing Agreement (RSA) with the State of Maryland. The agreement requires USA Fiber to provide the state dark fiber strands on the path the CLEC is constructing between Ashburn and Baltimore.
In return, USA Fiber gets access to the state's public right-of-way assets, including resource-limited highways, along which it can build its own conduit and fiber infrastructure.
Maryland's RSAs are limited to registered CLECs that have met the public commission's unique requirements and then negotiated with its Department of Information Technology.
The agreement bolsters the attractiveness of USA Fiber's Ashburn Express cable system. The route provides a lower-latency path between Virginia and cities like Baltimore and into the Northeast by bypassing Washington, D.C., and other high-traffic routes like the I-95 Corridor, Amtrak and the WMATA, boring under the Potomac River at an undisclosed crossing point.
USA Fiber has had Maryland in its sights for some time now. The company announced it would build a fiber conduit in the Ashburn area back in October, a project it completed just this month and which serves as the anchor destination of its Ashburn Express route. Additionally, it interconnected its dark fiber with Montgomery County, Maryland's FiberNet in December, giving USA Fiber access to over 450 government and education buildings in the county. In addition to the state facilities though, a number of federal facilities are present in the area, including 17 Defense Department installations.
"What an honor it was to be a part of this process and to work with the state," said Judd Carothers, USA Fiber's chief operating officer, in a prepared statement. "Their mission is to enable economic growth, technological leadership, create jobs and a great living environment for their citizens. We are proud to have our team based in Hunt Valley, MD and to invest into new infrastructure in Maryland."
USA Fiber is one of several alternative fiber providers that are taking advantage of the opportunity to provide alternate routes and services in areas where incumbent wireline providers do not have adequate network infrastructure.
For more:
- see the release
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