Allied Fiber's Nationwide, Network-Neutral, Dark Fiber System Gets a Big Investor Boost

By Marisa Torrieri, TMCnet Editor

Armed with plans to pave the way for a nationwide network-neutral, dark-fiber system, Allied Fiber today announced it has secured definitive agreements from financial partners to build out its  network-neutral, high-count dark fiber, colocation and wireless tower integrated system. 

The $140 million in financing Allied Fiber (News - Alert) has secured from partners -- including Norfolk Southern Railway and several major railroads and right-of-way owners - will finance the construction of the first phase linking New York City, Chicago and Ashburn, Va., slated for completion in the fourth quarter of 2010.

"The first phase obviously is the piece of a bigger picture, and that will unfold," Hunter Newby (News - Alert), CEO of Allied Fiber, told TMCnet. "It encompasses all of the elements that all of the other phases have."

Allied Fiber has selected Michels Communications, a division of Michels Corporation, Henkels & McCoy, Inc. and Adesta, LLC to construct and install various portions of the system.

The new 432-count, long haul cable coupled with the 216-count, short-haul cable will be a composite of Single-Mode and Non-Zero Dispersion Shifted fibers. By having a high-fiber count and being network-neutral, Allied Fiber is able to offer dark fiber and at lower unit costs. The first phase of the system will provide a combined 648 dark fibers, 19 700+ sq ft colocation facilities and 300 tower sites all integrated into one system from one provider, creating a new standard for interconnection.

The user community for these physical-layer services ranges from and includes submarine cable systems, large international and domestic wireline and wireless carriers and network operators to small rural carriers, cooperatives and cable television companies.

According to TeleGeography, trans-Atlantic bandwidth demand has grown at a compounded annual growth rate of 47 percent between 2004 and 2009.  It is expected to continue growing strongly from 2010 to 2015, with total demand for capacity nearly doubling every two years.  Furthermore, In-Stat research indicates that 90,000 Gbps of capacity in the last mile of the backhaul network will be needed by the end of 2013 to support the world's cellular and WiMAX (News - Alert) networks.

Already, Allied Fiber has implemented a new, multi-duct design for intermediate access to the long-haul fiber duct through a parallel short-haul fiber duct all along the route. This will allow all points between the major cities, including wireless towers and rural networks, to gain access to the dark fiber.

In addition, the Allied Fiber neutral colocation facilities, located approximately every 60 miles along the route, accommodate and encourage a multi-tenant interconnection environment integrated with fiber that does not yet exist in the United States on this scale.

With planned, direct connections to the submarine cable systems linking the Atlantic, Caribbean, Latin American and Pacific cables, Allied Fiber will also provide express routing of traffic through the United States on the latest and most advanced fiber types available. Building new, shortest path, physical duct and fiber routes combined with modern fiber will allow lower latencies as well as higher capacities to be achieved between these points.

"The point is that Allied Fiber is a function of place and time," Newby told TMCnet. "What we're doing couldn't have been done ten years ago. We are really bringing together fiber, wireless towers and neutral collocation into an integrated system."

(source: http://dark-fiber.tmcnet.com/topics/dark-fiber/articles/86116-allied-fibers-nationwide-network-neutral-dark-fiber-system.htm)