Zayo to supply Montreal dark fiber ring for global cloud provider

Zayo Group Holdings (NYSE: ZAYO) says it will construct a dark fiber ring in the Montreal metro area for a global cloud provider Zayo didn't further identify. The 60-km dark fiber ring will run along the South Shore section of the city, which Zayo says is an emerging technology and data center hub.

The ring will connect multiple data centers for the client. Zayo asserts it won the contract due to "its leading fiber network in Canada, deep experience in building high-performance fiber network, and flexibility in planning for the customer's continued growth."

Zayo also will use the additional fiber-optic network cabling to expand its footprint into several metro municipalities in the Montreal area. The company gained fiber-optic network infrastructure in the city as part of its acquisition of Allstream in 2015 (see "Zayo to buy Allstream for Canadian expansion"). The deployment will include an expansion cable that will enable Zayo to serve other clients along the same route. Zayo says the South Shore is becoming an attractive area for data centers, cloud providers and webscale companies due to its location and the availability of cost-effective power sources. Montreal, meanwhile, is becoming a hub for finance, media, artificial intelligence (AI), gaming, and other large enterprises who might be interested in fiber-optic network services.

"This project enables us to further expand our Canadian footprint and deliver the high-performance communications infrastructure that this long-standing customer merits," said Jack Waters, CTO and president of Fiber Solutions at Zayo. "We expect to capture the benefits of scale leveraging our dense Montreal footprint and these new success-based routes."

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