Metro Bytes: Lightpath, 123NET, Ezee Fiber, DFN, Render Networks, Firstlight

Here is a series of news bytes covering regional infrastructure expansion projects from this week:

Lightpath has closed its acquisition of United Fiber & Data. UFD had built a unique route between NYC and Ashburn as well as 79 route miles of metro fiber. Lightpath is moving quickly to leverage those assets as well, and has introduced LightCube Edge Data Centers. They will be upgrading four existing ILA sites on UFD’s NYC-Ashburn route with the modular facilities.

123NET has signed an agreement with Lee Township in Allegan County. The deal is part of a county-wide broadband project worth some $65M that has been underway since 2023 and will see 1,100 route miles of new fiber. The Lee Township deal enables them to construct 15 miles of that fiber to connect the town of Pullman. The full project is expected to be complete by the end of this year.

Ezee Fiber has announced an expansion project in the Greater Puget Sound region of Washington. They will be investing $400M into fiber to the home networks in the region, starting with Kent, a large suburb near the airport and between Seattle and Tacoma. Ezee is also in the middle of projects worth $200M near Houston and $250M in New Mexico. The company is looking at additional such projects to kick off later in 2025.

Douglas Fast Net is preparing for some expansion out in southern Oregon. They have tapped Render Networks for the software platform necessary to modernize their construction management capabilities. Smaller providers like DFN still have to scale up to handle significant buildout projects. DFN serves a region south of Eugene OR centered on Douglas County.

And Firstlight has completed a data center expansion project in the far northeast. They have added more floor space, power capacity, generators, and UPS capacity to their facility in Brunswick, Maine and sits about 25 miles northeast of Portland. The facility used to be a NATO Command and Control Center.

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Categories: Datacenter · FTTH · Mergers and Acquisitions · Metro fiber