Integra's Electric Lightwave Extends Long-Haul Fiber

Integra’s enterprise unit has beefed up its West Coast long-haul fiber routes.

Electric Lightwave announced Monday that its network long-haul routes and capabilities have doubled. The company said customers will be able to connect more easily to cloud services and data centers thanks to three new direct routes connecting the Los Angeles and Bay Area and a direct route connecting the Bay Area to suburban Portland, Oregon.

“We continue to build on the strengths of our network to offer our customers a highly differentiated solution that blends diverse network routes, direct access along key West Coast corridors, built-in reliability and security,” President Dan Stoll said.

Stoll said the company improved its route diversity by acquiring opticAccess last August and using advanced data-networking technologies. Lightwave also completed a fiber optic route to a city in Washington state in April. Traversing a “diverse route” allows customers to avoid the heavily trafficked routes of other carriers, the company said.

Scott Forbush, Electric Lightwave’s vice president of indirect sales, said the expansion will create “significantly more opportunity” for the company’s channel partners.

“With two separate, diverse long haul routes up and down the West Coast, and access to multiple 10G ‘express routes,’ our partners can offer enterprises fast delivery of low latency, high performance service,” he told Channel Partners.{ad}

Electric Lightwave says more than 3,500 enterprise premises are connected to its network.

Integra spun off Electric Lightwave as a distinct business unit last year. Lightwave serves enterprise, government and wholesale customers, while Integra Business targets midmarket customers.

“The creation of these dedicated business units advances our ongoing objective to extend the availability and use of our advanced network infrastructure,” former interim CEO Robert Guth said at the time.