Zayo Dives Into 400G

With 400G now going mainstream and 800G waiting in the wings, Zayo Group has decided it’s time for an upgrade. The Boulder-based infrastructure provider isn’t doing it halfway either, announcing plans to build out a 400G-enabled long haul network spanning their entire footprint in the US and Europe.

Zayo’s 400G upgrade project will touch 31 of its routes across North America and western Europe, and they give some details on that rollout on their website.  In the US, some routes, including Portland-Boise-Salt Lake City-Las Vegas and Denver-Omaha-Chicago-NYC are already done, while a few others like Altanta-Miami and the Northern Tier aren’t scheduled to be done by the end of Q2/2022.  The rest will be staggered between now and then.  In Western Europe they already have a bunch complete, with Frankfurt-Amsterdam and Frankfurt-Paris still to go by the end of this year.   800G transmission will be enabled as well in some areas, and that reach will no doubt expand as technology allows over the next few years.

The move will position Zayo to take better advantage of the new longhaul intercity routes they have built out organically over the past 5 years, taking on the wholesale bandwidth segment in a more coherent manner than in the past.  Demand for bigger pipes is being driven by the ever present increases in users, devices, and applications leveraging today’s infrastructure, with new technologies like 5G, VR, AI, and everything cloud and edge promising to keep the train rolling for the foreseeable future.

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Categories: Fiber Networks · Telecom Equipment