Electric Lightwave Doubles Its Intercity Footprint

Electric Lightwave, the infrastructure brand that Integra revived last year, announced this morning that its network is rather larger now.  The network provider has doubled its network long-haul routes.

The primary piece of this is the integration of the opticAccess assets, which Integra bought in the second half of last year.  That deal gave them diverse longhaul paths between southern California and points to the north which were greatly complimentary.  But they have also picked up some dark fiber to fill in gaps, and will surely be looking for more regional assets to continue the process.

Integra’s Electric Lightwave unit has now integrated those dark fiber assets, lighting them and bringing greater capacity and new options to its portfolio.  They are hoping to benefit from more comprehensive coverage of their western home turf, now offering three diverse routes between LA and the SF Bay Area as well as a direct route from there to Hillsboro, Oregon that doesn’t pass through Portland.  They recently also built out a route to Quincy up in Washington as well.

I have long thought that Integra, and especially its Electric Lightwave assets, would end up as a consolidation target at some point for a larger provider in need of western infrastructure.  That’s probably still pretty likely in the long run, but for now the company seems to be on offense again.

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Categories: Fiber Networks