Sidera Expands Southward Through Virginia

Sidera Networks unveiled an aggressive new buildout project this morning. The company is planning a statewide network in Virginia, taking it for the first time beyond the suburbs of Washington DC and into ‘the South’. I guess that means I’ll have to drop the ‘north’ from the phrase ‘northeastern regional fiber operator’ from here on out.

The buildout will add more than 1,000 route miles to Sidera’s fiber network, extending from its current southernmost point in Chantilly down through Richmond and Roanoke and Newport News. Along the way they’ll be building into key data centers in rapidly developing hot spots like Culpeper and Richmond. There are also various federal and military sites they’ll be looking to bring on-net.

But the key thing to notice here is that this is the first substantial territorial expansion these assets have seen in a long time, whether under the Sidera brand, RCN Metro before that, or Neon Communications before that.

Sidera started the year on a more aggressive note when it brought in Clint Heiden as president, whom we interviewed here back in April. Heiden is quite familiar with the Virginia fiber scene of course, having headed up Intellifiber and then PAETEC Fiber Services prior to the Windstream acquisition.

The Virginia expansion is expected to be completed by the end of 2013. By then, perhaps they’ll already be working on the obvious next phase down into North Carolina.

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Categories: Metro fiber