Zayo has reached a milestone in building out its backbone network, announcing today it has rolled out two additional long-haul dark fiber routes in the Midwest U.S. Zayo also made waves with its 400G network upgrades, adding a total of 18 400G enabled routes in the second half of 2022.
The company completed a high-capacity fiber link between Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio, offering Zayo customers an alternative routing option into the state capital. Additionally, Zayo said it’s wrapping up a build from St. Louis to Indianapolis, allowing users to bypass Chicago when connecting markets in the East and West. Construction on that route is scheduled to be completed by year-end.
Along with advancing those dark fiber routes, Zayo has upgraded fiber capacity on its Las Vegas, Nevada to Phoenix, Arizona route. Zayo plans to integrate 400G into the route sometime in 2023.
More is to come on Zayo’s long-haul fiber network. The company’s coverage map indicates it’s currently constructing two additional routes across Ohio, which would eventually link Columbus to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Ashburn, Virginia. Zayo is also working on a West Coast route trailing from Umatilla, Oregon, to Reno, Nevada.
Zayo Chief Product Officer Bill Long noted the company has leveraged its “extensive existing infrastructure footprint” to pursue new fiber builds. To date, Zayo touts a fiber footprint of more than 16 million miles, with its backbone network spanning 75,000 miles.
“The continued expansion of our dark fiber and wave routes provides our customers with the customization and scaling ability they need to accelerate their digital transformation journeys,” stated Long.
The comapny has been working on its 400G upgrades since August 2021, when it unveiled plans to deploy 31 400G routes across North America and Western Europe. The company announced last spring it reached the halfway point of that expansion.
Zayo President Andrés Irlando told Fierce in May the company is on track to complete 400G upgrade work by the end of 2022, but added, “We’ll see how long we can outrun the pressures the entire industry is facing.”
Zayo is also widening its subsea footprint, as it just completed its third Transpacific route, this one connecting Hillsboro, Oregon to Tokyo, Japan. And in Europe, Zayo this summer launched its 192-fiber count Zeus subsea route, connecting London with Amsterdam.
Not only is Zayo investing in long-haul routes and 400G, Irlando said in October it’s also “re-architecting” its dark fiber metro network in order to make its offerings more attractive to mid-market enterprise customers. According to Irlando, Zayo currently has 30,000 on-net buildings enabled into its metro network and it’s in the process of building up that portfolio.