Zayo announced a series of advancements to make its independent fiber network even more powerful for customers. The growth marks Zayo's largest organic network expansion to date and encompasses best-in-class long-haul dark fiber, 400 Gbps (400G) upgrades and subsea routes across the globe. This effort represents an investment totaling nearly a quarter of a billion dollars that will continue to yield new and upgraded routes globally over the next 18 months.

"Enterprises of all sizes are entering a transformational, yet highly-complex time as they face a convergence of factors ranging from digital-first implementation and the future of work to rapid cloudification and edge computing. At Zayo, we recognize that each of these advancements is only as successful as the connectivity empowering it," said Andrés Irlando, President, Zayo. "We are committed to continuous expansion and advancing our network and capabilities, and we remain focused on exceeding customer expectations now while positioning them for a future they are just now imagining."

Massive Growth in Long-Haul Capacity

Zayo is unique in its commitment to building a highly-scalable, diverse network by investing in a range of long-haul dark fiber routes to meet current and future customer needs. These new builds are entirely underground, giving customers the highest level of physical security and reliability. Zayo's key new dark fiber routes include:

• Cleveland-Columbus 
• Dallas- Atlanta
• Denver- Salt Lake City 
• Las Vegas- Phoenix
  

Dave Schaeffer, CEO of Cogent Communications and a Zayo customer, had the following to say about the network growth: "Cogent Communications is at the cutting edge of the IP / communications industry, and we are constantly expanding our footprint to new facilities and new markets. Zayo's future-ready, reliable dark fiber network with route diversity is an essential component in our network design to deliver best-in-class, scalable, and reliable IP services that our customers have come to expect from Cogent. We look forward to leveraging Zayo's dark fiber footprint to grow our network in the future." 

Leading the Industry in 400G

Zayo is one of the first providers to deliver a 400G network across the United States and Europe. So far, nearly half of Zayo's 75,000-mile backbone network is 400G enabled, and a majority is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2022.

This enhanced capacity will enable customers to scale as they embrace emerging technologies such as 5G, cloud adoption, IoT, AI, edge computing, and automation. Recently, Zayo completed a successful subsea 400G trial with Equinix in the UK, helping the data center provider prepare for the growing need to move increasingly greater volumes of data faster than ever before. Zayo's key new 400G routes include: 

• Dallas- Atlanta (creating the company's third major East-West route)
• Chicago- New York
• Denver- Chicago
• Denver- Salt Lake City (which completed the shortest route from San Francisco to New York, via Chicago)
• Los Angeles- Phoenix- Dallas
• Salt Lake City- San Francisco Bay Area
• San Francisco Bay Area- Los Angeles
  

"Zayo is quickly differentiating itself as a market leader when it comes to network diversity, capacity and future-readiness," said Will Townsend, Vice President & Principal Analyst, Networking & Security at Moor Insights & Strategy. "A proof point is its new coast-to-coast route that traverses nearly a straight line across the U.S., delivering 400G performance that supports low-latency-intensive applications such as financial trading. Zayo's recent network build-outs represent an investment in future capacity for its customers."

Zayo isn't stopping at 400G. Recently, the company set a record for the world's longest known terrestrial 800G optical wavelength in a commercial network, toaling 1,044.51 km. 

Enhancing the Customer Experience

In tandem with its growth in long-haul capacity and 400G, the company has made significant investments in a new, customer-centric model designed to make the process of working with Zayo easier than ever for customers. As part of its commitment to deliver a best-in-class customer experience, Zayo has hired more than 200 additional operations staff focused on three key areas: service delivery, service assurance and network performance. Zayo has improved its systems to drive higher first-touch resolution, and has enhanced its network management tools and processes to enable proactive event detection and prevention. Over the last year, Zayo's on-time delivery performance has increased by 20%, and Zayo has reduced average install intervals by 10%.