Lightower adds 1500 miles to Washington, DC, Virginia fiber-optic network

Fiber-optic network services provider Lightower Fiber Networks says it has added another 1500 miles to its footprint in Virginia and the Washington, DC, metro region. The new fiber-optic cable complements the infrastructure in the area that Lightower acquired when it merged with Sidera Networks (see “Lightower completes Sidera Networks merger”).

The new fiber includes more than 1100 route miles of high fiber-count infrastructure that runs through most of Virginia and into North Carolina that Lightower began to install in May 2012. The service provider has added nearly 400 route miles in the Washington, DC, metro region as well, including parts of northern Virginia and southern Maryland.

Lightower expects the new fiber-optic cable will play well with the increase in demand for network services from enterprises, educational institutions, and government and military agencies in the region. The new infrastructure includes links to area data centers, including those in Ashburn, Culpepper, and Richmond, VA, as well as Washington, DC. It also provides access to the rest of Lightower’s network and more than 7500 service locations throughout the U.S. Mid-Atlantic, Northeast, and Chicago regions. This includes links between DC and New York that bypass the I-95 corridor.

“This expansion dramatically increases the number of customers Lightower can serve in the Washington, DC, metro and Virginia markets,” stated Rob Shanahan, CEO of Lightower. “Lightower will continue to aggressively invest and expand in this region, all in response to the tremendous demand we are seeing here. Our high-performance networking solutions power some of the largest companies and most demanding applications in the world, and now we are bringing more of this networking power to Washington.”

Lightower says it expects to begin bringing customers online in the fall of this year.

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