Westward Ho!: Windstream Adds 4,800 Miles to Fiber Transport Network

Windstream is expanding its long-haul express fiber transport network throughout the western United States using Infinera’s DTN-X platform, with the first phase to be complete by the end of the year.

This network expansion is part of the company’s existing strategic capital investment initiatives and adds new fiber routes, connecting major markets across the country. The first phase will add four major markets to Windstream’s 100G long-haul network: Salt Lake City, Reno, Las Vegas, and the Silicon Valley/San Francisco Bay Area.

The second phase of the project – expected to be finalized by the end of 2017 – adds 100G routes extending from the Bay Area to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Phoenix, and Phoenix to El Paso, Texas. In all, the new routes will add about 4,800 route miles to Windstream’s fiber network, which currently spans more than 125,000 miles and is the sixth largest in the nation.

Jason Dishon, Windstream’s channel chief of enterprise sales and operations, tells Channel Partners the expansion is “of substantial benefit to our partners as they will be able to focus on specific fiber markets for big bandwidth services with a concentration on enterprise solutions within our extensive product portfolio.”{ad}

“Aligned with our dedicated channel account management teams growing the channel base and the channel managers focused on our strategic partners, this expansion opens the doors for the enterprise revenue our channel is targeting in our newly built fiber markets,” he said.

The network expansion will offer wholesale and enterprise customers access to more than 1,200 10G points of presence (PoPs) in 800 cities and more than 400 100G PoPs in many carrier hotels and data centers across the United States.

“Broadening our fiber reach into the West Coast area – home to some of the most vibrant technology and startup companies in the United States – now positions Windstream as a nationwide provider of high bandwidth transport services, and a service provider that should be top of mind with any customers looking for national Wave and carrier Ethernet services,” said Mike Shippey, president of Windstream’s wholesale business unit.

Windstream’s dense fiber network offers enterprise and wholesale customers across the country access to the company’s portfolio of services, including optical Waves, MEF 2.0 certified carrier Ethernet, MPLS and dedicated Internet access.

Additionally, the expanded network presence in the western United States provides the connectivity required to support international traffic coming into the U.S. from the Pacific Rim, offering Asia-Pacific providers low-latency, 100G connectivity to Tier 1, 2 and 3 markets across the United States.