Zayo on Tuesday announced that it has built its own national 100G network from which it will offer wavelength services in a number of major markets in the United States.
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Zayo's new 100G national network. (Image source: Zayo) |
Already operational in a number of locations, the service provider plans to continue the rollout through the remaining part of this year and into the first half of 2013.
This upgrade, which will take place on both its long-haul and metro networks, will enable Zayo to provide native 100G wavelength connectivity to key traffic aggregation points and IP nodes on its U.S. network.
"We've had interest in 100G in a couple of different places both on the customer side and the line-side perspective just to make sure we are well prepared to handle increasing bandwidth demands," said Zach Nebergall, the leader of Zayo's wavelength product group, in an interview with FierceTelecom. "We had a smattering of routes that were upgraded or were in the process of being upgraded related to some internal network optimization or specific anchor customer deals so that's what drove us to upgrade some links."
Nebergall added that these specific upgrades could form its larger 100G roadmap for its entire network.
"If we take a step back and look at this holistically, we asked what would want our 100G strategy to look like," he said.
Since being founded in 2007, Zayo has acquired 22 other service providers, including most recently City Net and 360networks, in addition to AboveNet and First. These diverse acquisitions gave Zayo a number of unique network routes.
"One of the things that made our assets great when you think about the old City Net and 360networks' footprint, they had a bunch of unique tier two through five add/drops so they went to places like Wheeling, West Virginia and Cheyenne, Wyoming, which are really good from a revenue per-unit standpoint and a way to differentiate from other folks," Nebergall said. "What it doesn't do is give you a really compelling cost point in terms of having an express-type network."
While it did not reveal its optical supplier other than to say it is working with two or three vendors, Zayo did say that it is using coherent optical technology as well as the ability to scale bandwidth capacity along these routes to 8 Terabytes.
With these network assets in place, Zayo is focusing on upgrading its DWDM network in key IP Points of Presence (PoPs) in a number of major cities such as New York and Chicago, for example.
"The way we're designing the 100G network relative to Zayo's existing DWDM footprint to key in on two dozen core IP PoPs in the country," Nebergall said. "It will not only help optimize they way we manage the network internally, but also create a fairly compelling customer-facing story as some of the major IP players are looking for native 100G handoffs."
Nebergall added that Zayo's unique fiber routes will help it differentiate itself from other providers that are also upgrading to 100G such as XO Communications by offering more network diversity.
"From a unique fiber route perspective, Zayo has a compelling story to tell in relation to other carriers," he said. "If you look at the customers that are likely going to want 100 Gig, having a unique fiber route will help us from a diversity play for our customer's needs."
For more:
- see the release
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