Windstream has taken another step forward in its Western market expansion via an agreement with CoreSite to deploy two network PoPs at the data center provider’s Los Angeles and Denver campuses, giving the carrier another weapon to battle Zayo for wholesale and retail business service dollars.
This agreement with CoreSite will enable Windstream to become a more formidable competitor to Zayo, which furthered its own West Coast expansion dreams by purchasing Electric Lightwave last year.
By establishing this into these two markets brings Windstream’s presence with CoreSite to a total of six markets, including its deployments in Silicon Valley, Chicago, Northern Virginia/D.C., and New York.
What’s significant about these new network PoPs is that that they will expand the reach of Windstream’s 150,000-mile fiber network to two highly interconnected markets, including One Wilshire (LA1), one of the world’s most densely interconnected data centers.
Additionally, the CoreSite Los Angeles data center campus is the site of the largest peering exchange on the West Coast—the CoreSite Any2Exchange for internet peering, providing direct access to Any2 switches from all of CoreSite’s data centers.
Being a symbiotic relationship, the new connections will provide benefits not only to Windstream, but also provide CoreSite customers with access to Windstream’s business services portfolio, including optical wavelengths, MEF 2.0 Certified Carrier Ethernet, MPLS and Dedicated Internet Access (DIA).
CoreSite customers will also be able to take advantage of Windstream’s SDN-based solutions enable dynamic cloud connectivity, a concept that’s relevant to verticals in the West Coast market, including content delivery providers, entertainment and media syndicates, gaming and social media platforms, e-Commerce companies, international carriers and more.
In May, the service provider introduced its SDNow (Software Defined Network Orchestrated Waves) for wholesale content and service provider customers, for example.
This agreement with CoreSite ties into Windstream’s two-phase Western fiber network expansion plans—a segment that it previously lacked. The service provider will likely capitalize on the Western fiber network to further bolster its wholesale network services unit revenues.
During the first phase of the network build that was completed at the end of last year, Windstream added four major markets to its 100G long-haul network: Salt Lake City, Reno, Las Vegas, and the Silicon Valley/San Francisco Bay Area.
For the second phase of the project—expected to be finalized by the end of 2017—Windstream will add 100G routes extending from the Bay Area to Los Angeles; Los Angeles to Phoenix; and Phoenix to El Paso, Texas. Upon completion, the new routes will add a total of about 4,800 route miles to Windstream’s fiber network, which currently spans more than 125,000 miles.
Upon completing the Western expansion, Windstream’s wholesale and enterprise customers will be able to access to over 1,200 10G Points of Presence (PoPs) in 800 cities and more than 400 100G PoPs in many premier carrier hotels and data centers across the United States.