FiberLight LLC is nearing completion on its Texas Expansion Project. In addition to enhancing wireless capabilities for four major wireless carriers, the company has penetrated many of the state’s growing fourth- and fifth-tier markets, connecting them to FiberLight’s existing Dallas and Houston markets through Ethernet backhaul technology.
By the end of the year, the company will connect nearly 800 cell towers across the state and will have installed 1,765 route miles of new fiber networks in 2014. Layer III services are now available across the central Texas region, including San Marcos, San Antonio, Corpus Christi and Bryan.
Additionally, FiberLight will deploy its Layer I DWDM and Layer II network across West Texas by the beginning of 2015, connecting Abilene, Amarillo, Lubbock, Midland, Odessa and every smaller town in between to each other and to the state’s traditional metro hubs. The project means that previously underserved areas will be able to connect across the state and transport data to larger cities, over high-speed, high-bandwidth Internet access.
“Not only will our work in Texas increase the quality of services available to growing industries in the state, such as energy, healthcare and agriculture, but home Internet and wireless services users will start to see greater service availability and fewer usage restrictions from local providers,” said Paul Pierron, CEO for FiberLight. “There are a number of towns across our current and planned footprint that are growing very quickly, and both businesses and residents will demand access to the same level of service they would get in a larger market. We are enabling towns and local service providers to meet this demand.”
This year’s Texas expansion activities for FiberLight also included installations into Austin’s Data Foundry and Bryan’s FIBERTOWN data centers, two of the go-to disaster recovery and backhaul redundancy points of presence (PoPs) in the Central Texas region.
FiberLight will complete another 1,100 miles of its Texas expansion project in 2015, and another 900 miles across the state in 2016.
“There are a number of hurdles we will have to clear next year,” remarks Ron Kormos, FiberLight’s chief strategy officer. “We still have to secure nearly 1,000 permits with various authorities and have been delayed where our network intersects with certain railroad crossings. We are looking forward to resolving these issues quickly so that we can complete our work ahead of schedule.”
