Zayo Group Holdings, Inc. and Equinix, Inc. announced the successful completion of a 400 Gbps (400G) trial, connecting data centers in London (Slough) and Paris on Zayo's subsea fiber network. The trial - undertaken in Q1 2022 - marks the latest joint innovation between the companies as they prepare for the growing need to move continually-increasing volumes of data faster than ever before.

"As the first global data center platform to trial 400G, we see tremendous potential in how it will help power our next generation of services," said Muhammad Durrani, Senior Director, Global Network Architecture, Equinix. "Our success in this trial is about more than faster speeds; it's about the outcomes it will enable for our customers, such as achieving the low-latency requirements of critical devices transforming everything from transportation to healthcare."

As part of the trial, Zayo deployed a 500G optical channel on its 800G-enabled, DWDM network. The company used the additional bandwidth to deploy an extra 100G wave for enhanced monitoring capabilities, creating increased visibility to ensure the consistent viability of the network. The connection was able to withstand full-load testing without any traffic loss.

The new 400G technology produced many benefits by reducing hardware from four separate 100G optical cards to just one 400G card. This resulted in a simple application with fewer handoffs between the customer and Zayo, reducing the potential points of failure. Equinix streamlined operations by having fewer circuits to manage and operate its network while reducing costs. These achievements mark key differentiators for customers who build their networks around high bandwidth capacity.

"At Zayo, not only are we focused on our customers' connectivity needs today, we are preparing for their speed, latency, and capacity needs of tomorrow while simultaneously driving efficiencies and simplifying the overall network design," said Yannick Leboyer, Zayo's COO, Europe. "Equinix is sitting at the epicenter of several trends that are reshaping the industry - from digital transformation and big data to IoT and AI. Together, we're future-proofing the ecosystem to help companies grow and innovate."

As part of the trial, Zayo also reduced power consumption per gigabit by 40% compared to prior generation hardware. In addition to reducing energy costs for customers, the achievement aligns with commitments by both Zayo and Equinix to sustainable business practices and efforts to reduce environmental impacts. Zayo has also achieved efficiencies in hardware and equipment usage.

Zayo is working to deliver 400G wavelength services across the majority of its U.S. and European routes by the end of 2022, showing Zayo's commitment to addressing the increasing demand for high-bandwidth, low-latency services across the whole spectrum of its customers.