Zayo has is gaining fiber momentum in Canada by building a dark fiber ring in the Montreal metro area to accommodate a new cloud provider anchor tenant.
As part of this build, Zayo will extend its existing dense network in Montreal, building a 60-kilometer ring for the cloud provider along the South Shore, the city’s growing technology and data center hub.
The new fiber ring will support the customer's strategy to expand its presence in Montreal, ultimately connecting multiple data centers. Being a favorable location for businesses to establish a foothold and an area with cost-effective power, the South Shore has become an attractive location for data centers, cloud providers and webscale companies.
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Zayo was selected by the cloud provider because of its leading fiber network in Canada, deep experience in building high-performance fiber network and flexibility in planning for the customer’s continued growth.
This new network will further densify Zayo’s Montreal network, expanding it into several metro municipalities. As part of the build, Zayo will lay an expansion cable with ample capacity for expected follow-on sales in multiple sectors. Being a growing North American commercial hub and a growing center for finance, media, artificial intelligence (AI), gaming and other large enterprises, Montreal is a ripe target Zayo can use to grow its fiber presence in Canada.
“This project enables us to further expand our Canadian footprint and deliver the high-performance communications infrastructure that this long-standing customer merits,” said Jack Waters, CTO and president of Fiber Solutions at Zayo, in a release.
This latest win also helps Zayo further validate the initial large investment it made in Canada via its purchase of Allstream. By purchasing Allstream, Zayo established itself as a Pan-U.S./Canada fiber network provider, and added five dense metro networks to its portfolio.
Allstream gave Zayo a large fiber network consisting of 18,000 route miles, including 12,500 miles of long-haul fiber connecting all major Canadian markets and 5,500 route miles of metro fiber network connecting approximately 3,300 on-net buildings concentrated in Canada's top five metropolitan markets.
The service provider’s move in Canada to expand fiber network facilities based on success-based builds for anchor customers reflects a companywide strategy Zayo has taken in the U.S. and Europe.
Zayo recently announced that 20 school districts have purchased services via the E-Rate contract. The service provider also won a new fiber-to-the-tower (FTTT) contract with a national wireless operator covering new macro towers in 30 markets across 21 states. Like the Canadian deal, these contracts will also leverage and extend existing fiber network assets.