Telia Carrier Takes the Blue Ridge to Ashburn

Telia Carrier has added a new fiber route to its US network, adding some unique diversity on a core leg. The international arm of the Swedish giant has put together a new option between the key nodes of Atlanta and Ashburn that takes a western route through the Appalachians and the markets of Chattanooga, Knoxville, Roanoke, and Charlottesville.

Now Telia hasn’t been out there digging up the streets in a big way, but nevertheless the new route they have developed is unique and more than a simple new fiber IRU. What they did was work with nine different regional fiber operators who have been building out network for the likes of wireless backhaul etc. From those separate IRUs and some bits and pieces they built out to connect it all together, Telia now has a fully diverse option between two of the key US bandwidth nodes.

It’s an intercity route several have talked about building out, including Allied Fiber at one point, but which has remained elusive until now. The expansion passes along the Great Smoky mountains through eastern Tennessee and then generally tracks near the path of the Blue Ridge Parkway through the eastern Appalachians.  It offers 15.5ms RTD latency.

Adding to that new intercity infrastructure, Telia has also added metro rings on each end, bringing online a half dozen new data centers on-net in both northern Virginia and metro Atlanta. They have also hooked up to DCBlOX’s facility in Chattanooga.

Meanwhile, Telia also added a key new node to its network further north. They have opened a ‘terabit-scale’ PoP at NJFX on the Jersey Shore. From there they will soon be able to connect directly to destinations in Scandinavia through the new AEC2/Havfrue cable, as well as down south to Brazil.

When you put all that together, Telia Carrier has clearly been investing a lot into its infrastructure in the eastern US lately. One wonders what other regions of the country they are putting effort into, but I’m sure we’ll find that out over the next year or two.

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Categories: Fiber Networks · Internet Backbones