Wave Nets Nine Figures in Push to Build Out Gigabit Fiber Infrastructure

Most of us want better Internet connectivity, and the thought of Google Fiber, or its closest analogue, making it out to us is a thrill on par with the best. But Internet expansion isn't easy, or inexpensive, and requires quite a bit of capital to successfully bring to bear. To that end, Wave has reportedly raised $130 million in a bid to drive network expansion along the West Coast.

Wave pulled in the funding in as the result of a bond sale, featuring some big names interested in picking up the bonds. Bond buyers reportedly included Deutsche Bank, Wells Fargo and Sun Trust, among others, and will help bring service to wider portions of California, Oregon and Washington. Reports suggest that Wave's plan for 2015 involves a mix of last-mile connections as well as fiber builds throughout the region, with a combined total of 1,500 miles of fiber set to be laid in. A particular focus will be on Seattle in Washington, Portland in Oregon, and San Francisco in California, and the Bay Area is supposed to get a little something extra with new virtual cross-connect services going in.

The fiber construction is set to add more than 10,000 new residential subscribers to the roster and bring gigabit service to Seattle by the end of the year. Wave has been seen working gigabit service in Seattle already, though, by virtue of aerial fiber service for $80 per month, though expansion plans are in the works from there. In further support of this move, Wave made some internal roster changes as well, promoting Steve Friedman to executive vice president for fiber design and construction, and bringing Harold Zeitz in as company president and chief operations officer. Steve Weed, meanwhile, remains company CEO.

As part of the expansion, Wave plans on introducing a number of new business services such as colocation facilities and Hosted PBX.

Wave is hardly alone in this, as firms like Comcast and CenturyLink have been seen leading expansion efforts into the region, and reports put Google Fiber as considering San Jose and Portland as future Google Fiber cities.

Naturally, this is good news for area residents, and hopefully for the rest of the country beyond these places as well. There are a steadily increasing number of applications for bandwidth of late, and bandwidth will only be more necessary as we go along. Streaming video, videoconferencing, online gaming, cloud applications and a host of others all demand greater quantities of bandwidth, and that means fiber Internet will likely be more valuable as it goes along. But it's not really the speed of the bandwidth that's so important as it is the overall quantity of bandwidth; services like Google Fiber and Wave's fiber installations should help push the available bandwidth into the levels that need be to drive all the possibilities the Internet can offer. With Google Fiber advancing, albeit slowly, it may well be serving as the necessary impetus to drive other firms' expansions into fiber just to keep Google from seizing every market it lands on.

Only time will tell how this comes out, but it looks like Wave is doing quite well in driving fiber builds in the area. With other competitors making similar moves, we may well see fiber in a lot more places than those Google reaches soon enough.