Zayo lays out fiber plans for Jacksonville

Leveraging the USCarrier assets it purchased last year, Zayo on Wednesday announced it is going to expand its overall network into the Jacksonville, Fla., Market.

Targeting the city's greater metro area, Zayo will offer its suite of dark fiber, wavelength, Ethernet and IP-based services. The service provider's network node for long haul capabilities is currently located at 421 West Church Street in Jacksonville.

What's significant about this network buildout effort is that it is the company's first big metro fiber build in Florida. By expanding the network in Florida, Zayo will be able to compete against other fiber-centric service providers such as FiberLight, which has aggressively expanded its network throughout Florida, including Jacksonville and Miami's financial district, for example.

When it acquired the remaining piece of USCarrier last October, Zayo immediately deepened its fiber network presence in the Southeast United States with an additional 3,700-mile regional fiber network that connects a number of key markets including Atlanta, Jacksonville, Fla., Tallahassee, Fla., Nashville, Tenn., and Chattanooga, Tenn.

"While our expansion is in support of specific customers, the network is designed to serve as the core to our long-term Jacksonville metro network for local and international Bandwidth Infrastructure solutions," said Glenn Russo, executive vice president of Zayo, in a release.

Expanding its fiber network through acquisitions and organic buildout methods to deliver a mix of dark fiber and lit services like Ethernet has been an ongoing initiative for Zayo.

This work is paying off. The service provider's acquisitions of USCarrier, FiberGate and First Telecom Services, coupled with an increase in on-net installations, helped drive its fiscal second quarter revenue up $13.8 million sequentially to $243.5 million.

Zayo complemented these purchases, all of which deepened its on-net building presence in the areas they currently served, with $58.9 million in capital spending in the quarter, including the connection of 436 new buildings to its fiber network.

For more:
- see the release

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