Windstream Wholesale finishes fiber network deployment between Salt Lake City, Portland, and Seattle

Jan. 4, 2021
The fiber-optic network connects the Pacific Northwest to the rest of Windstream’s nationwide fiber network and sets up the company for planned future extensions in the near term.

Windstream Wholesale recently announced completion of a new fiber network route from Salt Lake City to Portland and Seattle. The fiber-optic network connects the Pacific Northwest to the rest of Windstream’s nationwide fiber network and sets up the company for planned future extensions.

The planned deployments include a connection into the Hillsboro, OR, submarine cable landing station that Windstream Wholesale expects to finish this quarter. Windstream also plans to light a diverse route that will connect Portland to the Bay Area in the same time frame. The expansions will provide a pair of diverse paths from the Hillsboro and Portland markets to data centers nationwide, Windstream stated.

“This new high-capacity route to Portland and Seattle was built in response to booming customer demand for bandwidth,” said Joe Scattareggia, executive vice president of Windstream Wholesale. “Along with the network overlay, it will help ensure that Windstream Wholesale is positioned to meet our customers’ needs for high-quality, low-latency services across our most popular routes for years to come.”

"Our Data Gravity Index suggests the Pacific Northwest, and Seattle in particular, is expected to experience sustained growth in data gravity intensity through 2024,” said Tony Bishop, Digital Realty senior vice president of platform, growth, and marketing. “The Westin Building Exchange is ideally placed to remove data gravity barriers, serving as the strategic regional interconnection hub linking the U.S. and Canada with Asia on PlatformDIGITAL. We are excited by the new possibilities that the combination of Windstream Wholesale’s Network Hub deployment with us in Seattle and the new routes announced today will open up for customers looking to scale their digital business.”

Windstream adds the expansions fall under an initiative to increase capacity on several major long haul routes via flexible-grid compliant open optical line systems that support C+L band transmission as well as colorless, directionless, contentionless (CDC) ROADM capabilities. Windstream will use the new capabilities to strengthen such offerings as Wavelengths, Ethernet Solutions, and Dedicated Internet Access, as well as other offerings to wholesale and resale customers. These latter services include SD-WAN Wholesale, proprietary OfficeSuite White Label, and Cloud SIP and PRI.

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