On Friday, Zayo Bandwidth announced yet another FTTT initiative, this time in the Spokane and Coeur d’Alene area. That latter one is definitely a city I never would have known if I weren’t writing this blog, maybe next year I’ll learn how to pronounce it. Zayo intends to bring 45 towers in the area on-net for TDM and Ethernet backhaul, no doubt as part of the $65M they have planned for capex in 2010.
When complete, that will make over 1300 towers on-net, which is over half of Zayo’s total on-net structures. The company’s largest concentration of towers is in Philadelphia and the surrounding metro areas, in which they announced further investments last month. And they also have sizable efforts going on in Indianapolis and down in Memphis as well. I had thought Spokane might be next as it is the company’s next most dense collection of fiber assets, mostly coming from the acquisition of Columbia Fiber Systems last summer.
One of the things that makes the metro fiber business so interesting right now is that we are seeing successful implementations of so many different business models. Whether one is hooking up large office buildings, medium sized enterprises, wireless towers, or just central offices, things are rolling pretty well. Each of course sees the right path a bit differently, and so it should be. How is Zayo making the economics work? Obviously they think they have it figured out, else they wouldn’t be putting such money into it. One thing is for certain though, the additional scale from these tower deployments ensures they will be one of the dominant players in each of these four markets for a long time.
Now all they need is some more markets with that much fiber to work with. Hmmm…
If you haven't already, please take our Reader Survey! Just 3 questions to help us better understand who is reading Telecom Ramblings so we can serve you better!
Categories: Metro fiber · Wireless
Join Our LinkedIn Group
“Core-Da_Lane” Idaho.
Just over the border from WA state line, approx. 25-30 miles from Spokane.
A few carriers are already there. It is a really nice resort area with a huge lake and a couple of nearby ski areas. You should check it out sometime…fly into Spokane. Thx.
Also, great golf. With the worlds only floating green at the resort (have to take a nice old refurbished “woody” type boat out to the green – quite an experience).