As Allied Fiber prepares for the formal launch of its Atlanta-Miami route later this month, they have picked up a high profile customer on the southern half of it. Windstream has signed on for a fiber IRU on 360 route miles between Miami and Jacksonville.
Windstream will put the new dark fiber route to use on its 100G longhaul expansion project, WINterstate. It will provide them not just with the intercity connectivity between hubs, but the frequent break-out points along the route that Allied Fiber’s infrastructure was designed to provide, and space in the neutral colo huts that have been placed at intervals of 60 miles or so. We will surely be hearing about a few more such dark fiber deals for Allied Fiber this year, not to mention what their plans for the next leg of their expansion will be.
Windstream has both ILEC and CLEC pieces after its acquisition of PAETEC and KDL a few years ago. That gave them a bigger presence outside their home territory than an ILEC usually has, and the network reach to hook it all up. Supplementing that with some new dark fiber makes plenty of sense of course. Windstream’s own actual network assets are now held by the network REIT they just spun off — Communications Sales & Leasing.
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So the LEC is adding dark fiber from sources other than the REIT?
Is that an interesting development???
I thought about that, but in much of the country they already lease outside the REIT plenty. One more route doesn’t change that dynamic, because CS&L doesn’t have fiber on that route either after all.
Would that mean that REIT received actually physical assets versus IRU/leased assets? That would change my perspective on the entire transaction.
Frankly it’s unclear to me at this point where that dividing line falls. If a dark fiber IRU falls within CS&L’s mandate, I’d expect Windstream to use them as owner for that as well via another sale/leaseback just as they might if they went out and bought another CLEC who had some more fiber to add to the mix. But I note that the PR didn’t mention CS&L at all.