Zayo Group Holdings, Inc. has announced plans for two new unique, low-latency long haul dark fiber networks from Columbus, Ohio to Ashburn, Virginia and Dallas, Texas to Atlanta. Supported by a signed commitment, the expansions are expected to be attractive to additional strategic customers looking for wavelength and fiber connectivity between these cities.

The Columbus to Ashburn network expansion will add approximately 400 route miles of high-capacity fiber and is expected to provide the lowest latency between the two cities. The route will also provide Zayo customers with the lowest latency route between Chicago and Ashburn, as it will bypass major network congestion and overlap points. With its central location and proximity to major population centers, Columbus has become an increasingly important data center hub. Ashburn and Northern Virginia known as “Data Center Alley,” has the largest concentrations of data centers in the world. The route will traverse West Virginia, providing a new fiber backbone across the state.

The 870-mile Dallas to Atlanta route will connect these two key metro markets with the most direct, lowest latency route to date. Dallas and Atlanta are top 10 populations centers and top 10 data center markets, with Fortune 500 headquarters. Both cities are strategic markets for Zayo, with dense and growing metro fiber footprints driven in part by extensive fiber-to-the-tower (FTT) builds.

“To meet continued demand for dark fiber, we are building unique new routes between strategic markets,” said Jack Waters, CTO and president of Fiber Solutions at Zayo. “These expansions will provide superior options for direct, high-capacity, latency-sensitive paths connecting data and population centers to cloud platforms and end users.”

Construction on the new routes is expected to begin early next year.