Lumen Expands Fiber Network in Europe

Lumen Technologies has expanded its fiber network infrastructure in Europe, strengthening its service capabilities in France, Switzerland and Spain.

Lumen says the expansion puts high-performance fiber closer to end users for faster connections, lower latency and enhanced security. The infrastructure extends the fiber network in and between major hubs of business and finance in those countries. It provides dense coverage to connect enterprise buildings and third-party data centers to the Lumen network.

Lumen increased its footprint with the construction of a new fiber route of more than 180 miles between Lyon, France, and Geneva, Switzerland. This connects three new cities — Grenoble, Chambéry and Annecy. The length of the Lumen network rings is approximately 3,500 route miles in France and 420 route miles in Switzerland.

In addition, Lumen completed its national fiber ring by adding a new segment of more than 170 route miles between the Spanish city of Salou and the French border. The company also built a new metro network in Barcelona and connected to the MAREA trans-Atlantic subsea cable landing station in Sopelana. The national Lumen network ring in Spain is approximately 1,060 route miles.

Annette Murphy is managing director, EMEA, Lumen Technologies. She said the European investments are “powering the next wave of growth and innovation for customers in the 4th Industrial Revolution.”

Lumen’s Annette Murphy

“Companies are facing new challenges that require them to harness massive amounts of data at almost unimaginable speeds,” said Murphy.

The Lumen network “helps customers to leverage their data and adopt next-gen apps to unleash their business potential and deliver amazing digital experiences.”

Global Network

The Lumen network comprises approximately 450,000 global route miles of fiber. It connects to more than 180,000 on-net buildings and 2,200 public and private third-party data centers.

In Europe, the network comprises approximately 23,600 route miles of fiber. It connects to more than 2,000 on-net buildings and 500 public and private third-party data centers.

It connects to all the major public cloud service providers. These include Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute & Azure Government, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud and Oracle Cloud.

Apollo Global Management reportedly wants to buy consumer assets from the company in a deal worth more than $5 billion.