Tuesday Bytes: Lumen, FiberLight, Bluebird, Digital Crossroad

Some collaboration news, a new CEO, some new fiber, and a flagpole.

Lumen Technologies and Zoom have expanded their relationship this week, combining their efforts with a co-branded solution. The idea is to pair Lumen’s vast fiber network with Zoom’s collaboration platform, lowering latency, raising security, and adding more UC bells ans whistles. Vaccines may be in the wings, but it will be a few quarters before normality has a chance, and even then we all know the new levels of collaboration we have uncorked this past year will persist. CenturyLink rebranded as Lumen earlier this fall, for any who might have forgotten.

FiberLight has itself a new CEO. The southeastern metro and regional fiber operator has named Christopher Rabii as its new leader. Rabii will take over from Jim Lynch, who has served as interim CEO since July. Rabii moves over from an SVP role at Altice Business. FiberLight recapitalized back in September, and operates an extensive network across both Texas and northern Virginia as well as metro footprint in Atlanta and in the metro areas around Tampa, Florida.

Bluebird Network has finished up work on another metro buildout in its home turf of Missouri. The project adds 4.5 miles of fiber in Hannibal, connecting 16 small cell towers and boosting the company’s presence in Hannibal by 50%. The expansion adds support for future 5G deployments and brings another 45 buildings within striking range of Bluebird’s network.

And Digital Crossroad has found a way to add character to its new data center in Hammond, Indiana. The company announced this week that it has raised the largest flagpole in Chicagoland, and one of the ten largest in the country. The DX-1 facility is an adaptive re-use development of a former State Line power plant built on a 15-acre spit of land sticking out into Lake Michigan. It was launched recently with 105,000 square feet of space and 20MW of power. At full buildout, the facility will support some 1.7M square feet and 100MW of power.

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Categories: Datacenter · Jobs · Metro fiber · Unified Communications