Zayo adds 93 route miles to its hometown Boulder, Colo., network

Zayo has hatched what it says is a major network expansion effort in its headquarters market of Boulder, Colo., adding 93 route miles to its network.

Set to be completed by the end of the year, this investment will enable the service provider to provide connection speeds ranging from 1 Gbps to 1 Terabits per second (Tbps).

This new project will connect Zayo's existing 800 route mile Front Range fiber footprint and will be used to provide customers access to the service provider's suite of services, including Ethernet, wavelengths, IP, video transport and dark fiber.

"The Boulder was part of a broader build we're doing across Colorado Springs up to Fort Collins, which is still underway to build out a very expensive dense network across the front- range in Denver," said Matt Erickson, president of physical infrastructure at Zayo, in an interview with FierceTelecom. "We completed the project for a couple of customers who were interested in Zayo's products and acted as anchor customers."

Erickson added that this build has been underway "since the fall 2012 and should wrap up by early next year."

Already, one of its customers, Boulder Valley School District (BVSD), is seeing the benefits of this new network build.

"BVSD's partnership with Zayo provided a new network connection to a school site not previously on the district network, and additional network diversity and hardening," said Andrew Moore, chief information officer at Boulder Valley School District, in a release. "With public funding tight, finding public/private partnership opportunities, like the one with Zayo, enabled funding for the district to distribute over 1600 digital devices throughout our schools."

By partnering with Zayo, Boulder Valley School District (BVSD) was able to purchase Chromebooks for its students.

"It was a good public-private partnership and we're looking to do more and more of those," Erickson said.

But Colorado is just one of many states that are looking to work with service provider partners to get network infrastructure and lit services.

"Governors in a number of states, including Kentucky and Connecticut are looking to do public-private partnerships that basically ask for infrastructure services and lit services statewide," Erickson said. "We anticipate partnering more with states and municipalities in Colorado or elsewhere to expand networks and Boulder Valley School District is a good example of that."

Erickson added such agreements could include various elements such as "purchasing ducts, getting access to rights-of-way, or entering into contracts with states that allow us to expand our networks to area of the state that were previously not served or underserved."

From a broader perspective, Zayo's latest network expansion and the initial public offering it made last week on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) illustrates how the demand for business and consumer broadband services and content is driving the need for more fiber connectivity.

For more:
- see the release

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This article was updated on Nov. 6 with additional information from Zayo.