Integra reaches 3,000 building locations with fiber

Integra has extended fiber to more than 3,000 building locations in its 11-state territory that it serves via its Integra Business and Electric Lightwave business units.

Seeing what it says is significant growth in the Phoenix, Portland, Salt Lake City and Seattle markets, Integra's expansion is focused on addressing customer demand for high bandwidth service access to cloud services.

Any building location that's connected to Integra's fiber network means that any tenant can connect remote locations, access cloud and off-site data center services and deliver online services to their customers.

"With 3,000 locations now on-net, our infrastructure is more flexible, powerful and enterprise-ready than ever, and we look forward to continuing to lay new fiber connections to businesses whose needs align with our network's unique set of capabilities," said Dan Stoll, president, Electric Lightwave, in a release.

Reaching this milestone comes as Integra continues to look for opportunities to break free of its small business heritage and move into larger mid-sized and large enterprise business accounts.

In January, Integra established two new units--Integra Business while renewing the Electric Lightwave brand--both of which will focus on dedicating resources to the complex needs of mid-sized and large enterprise markets.

By broadening their on-net fiber reach, Integra can be more in control of the service experience it provides to business customers. Integra's drive to bring more fiber into more buildings is one of the main concerns that Ethernet providers have.

Fiber penetration into U.S. buildings has come a long way over the past 10 years, rising from as low as 10.9 percent in 2004 to over 42 percent in 2014, according to Vertical Systems Group's latest figures.

When the research firm asked survey participants what their biggest competitive differentiator would be, the answer was simple: the amount of fiber they have deployed in their network and the reach of their fiber facilities into buildings.  

For more:
- see the release

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