Northeastern fiber operator Lightower also announced a network expansion yesterday, unveiling a new route crossing the Hudson River. That makes six such crossings for Lightower, increasing even further its network depth in the Hudson Valley. The new route, which I believe shows up on the clipping of Lightower’s network map below, crosses the Hudson to the south of the Tappan Zee bridge between the counties of Westchester and Rockland. It crosses the Hudson at a narrower point and will help reduce latency on some routes from the NY metro area to the north and northeast.
Having grown up in New jersey, I’m always amazed at how important crossings of this one river are to many aspects of life on both sides of it. I took a look on Google Earth though, and found no bridge or tunnel – car or rail – on this route, so they must have chosen some other means.
Lightower has been amongst the most active consolidators in the fiber marketplace over the past year, purchasing up Veroxity, Lexent Metro Connect, and Open Access, as well as winning the auction for the remaining capacity of NSTAR Communications up in Boston. I doubt that their outlook has changed much on that front, and there could easily be more deals as 2011 continues. There are probably a few other minor assets left in their territory that could be targets, but it seems like from here they are more and more likely to pursue opportunities that expand beyond the NY-Boston-Albany triangle.
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You should enable the Panoramio Layer in Google Earth, which will lead you to http://www.panoramio.com/photo/8190622 which shows the nice sign “CABLE CROSSING” on the House next to the pier.