Metro Bytes: Uniti, Bandwidth IG, Lightpath, CityFibre

Four significant items of metro and last mile fiber news, three from the US and one from the UK:

Uniti Group will be constructing some significant fiber down in Alabama. They have won a 20-year deal for longhaul fiber and conduit from an unnamed hyperscale customer that will see them construct over 130 route miles of new infrastructure from Montgomery AL west to Cuba AL on the Mississippi border. The route will provide east-west diversity to existing connectivity between data center markets.

Bandwidth IG will also be building some significant new fiber infrastructure in the southeastern US. They will be doubling their footprint in Atlanta, adding 170 route miles of new infrastructure and reaching out into new areas in Rockdale, Newton, Henry, Dekalb, and Butts Counties. The new infrastructure will enable both the enterprise and hyperscale markets and looks ahead to AI-related demand.

Lightpath has formed two new internal units: Major Infrastructure Solutions for large-scale projects and Core Infrastructure and Network Solutions for enterprise customers. EVP Tim Haverkate will lead the former, while President Joe Harding will lead the latter. The idea is to respond to AI demand for network infrastructure more efficiently while maintaining their existing enterprise focus.

And over in the UK, CityFibre has begun work on a new project in hard to reach areas of Kent, which is the far southeastern corner of the country that includes the cliffs of Dover. They will be targeting 50K homes and businesses with XGS-PON, backed by the government’s Project Gigabit award. Meanwhile CityFibre has also tapped EXFO to help with the field testing of its network, which now reaches 3.8M premises across the country with an eye toward an eventual 8M.

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Categories: Artificial Intelligence · Metro fiber