CenturyLink, Inc. and CyrusOne have announced new CenturyLink fiber connectivity at five additional CyrusOne data centers. With this fiber network expansion, there are now 12 CyrusOne U.S. data center locations directly connected to CenturyLink’s robust 250,000-route-mile U.S. fiber network and a 300,000-route-mile international transport network.

CyrusOne is a global colocation solutions provider that specializes in highly reliable enterprise-class, carrier-neutral data center properties that house IT infrastructure for nearly 900 customers worldwide.

“We’re proud and excited to welcome CenturyLink’s fiber infrastructure in a total of 12 out of the 29 CyrusOne data centers in the U.S.,” said Josh Snowhorn, vice president and general manager, interconnection, CyrusOne. “CenturyLink’s increased connectivity with our data center facilities means that CyrusOne’s enterprise customers have another top-tier network to choose as their primary or backup data transport solution.”

By early 2016, CenturyLink’s fiber network will be connected within CyrusOne’s Austin III, downtown Cincinnati, Houston West III, San Antonio II and Sterling, VA, data centers. The company’s fiber network is already connected to CyrusOne’s Austin Met II, Austin I, Carrollton, TX, Chandler, AZ, Houston Galleria, Houston West and Lewisville data centers.

“With a direct connection to CenturyLink’s network, a business becomes connected to nearly 300 data centers, including more than 60 facilities where CenturyLink provides IT services, and more than 40,000 multi-tenant unit office buildings,” said Eric Barrett, director, network product management, CenturyLink. “We’re pleased to welcome CyrusOne and its customers to CenturyLink’s growing ecosystem of interconnected data centers and the end-to-end suite of services we offer to help fulfill a customer’s workload requirements.”

With fiber built into the data center meet-me rooms, CyrusOne customers can use multiprotocol label switching (MPLS), optical wave service, Ethernet and other IP services to access CenturyLink’s low-latency, secure, reliable and highly available network. Connection speeds range from 100 Mbps up to 100 Gbps, and direct fiber connections from each of the 12 data centers to a CenturyLink Point of Presence eliminate local-loop access charges.

With a connection to CenturyLink’s network, businesses can more easily access other CenturyLink solutions, including the CenturyLink Cloud platform, big data analytics, business continuity and disaster recovery services, managed hosting and data systems management. CenturyLink’s network is a gateway for enterprises to connect with the many additional data centers, service providers and business locations that are on-net with CenturyLink, which enables customers to implement a hybrid IT strategy.