Lightower Fiber Networks has opened a new wholly owned and operated fiber-optic network route that crosses the Potomac River near the data center mecca of Ashburn, VA. The fiber network bypasses the greater Washington, DC, area, enabling customers such as data center operators, cloud providers, and others to reach locations in northern Virginia, including the Ashburn area, via an alternative path.
The new route is designed to serve such locations in the Ashburn area as major data centers and provide access to cloud service providers, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Office 365. The Potomac River crossing also complements Lightower's Transcom route, which runs between New York City and Washington, DC, in a manner geographically diverse from the I-95 corridor. Customers using the Transcom route from the north can connect directly to the new Potomac River crossing for optimized latency and added network diversity to Virginia, the company says.
The newly opened link complements the rest of the company's fiber footprint in the greater Washington D.C. region, which serves customers in the enterprise, research, education, carrier, and government sectors (see, for example, "Lightower adds 1500 miles to Washington, DC, Virginia fiber-optic network"). In particular, the new crossing will provide federal government customers with a new option that is diverse from current providers, a factor germane in the context of U.S. Government Services Administration (GSA) Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) 070 contract Lightower recently received.
"Lightower is committed to continually expanding the Lightower Network through strategic builds and unique route expansions," said Phil Olivero, Chief Technology Officer of Lightower. "This new Potomac River crossing was a complex project to build, and one that adds significant value for our customers with service locations in Ashburn. This route is perfect for groups who are looking to diversify their routes, gain latency advantages, and strategically bypass the D.C. area. This build is another example of Lightower's aggressive strategy to bring our all-fiber, high-performance solutions to the organizations and areas that need them."
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