Lumos Networks, a fibre-based service provider serving the mid-Atlantic region with over 9,200 fibre route miles of infrastructure, has announced continued expansion of its sales pipeline for prospective carrier customers seeking diverse fibre routes from the Virginia Beach undersea cable landing site into both Richmond and Ashburn, Virginia.
Lumos noted that carriers have requested proposals for both lit and dark services to address demand for secure, high bandwidth solutions into data centre facilities in Richmond and Ashburn.
Lumos Networks announced it had extended fibre connectivity into the EdgeConneX Edge Data Center (EDC) in Norfolk, Virginia last year, noting that the new data centre connection leveraged its 822 fibre route mile expansion in Virginia that included 270 route miles of fibre in the Hampton Roads/Norfolk markets, encompassing the cities of Hampton, Chesapeake, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Newport News and Virginia Beach.
In May 2016, Telefonica, which had previously detailed plans to deploy the BRUSA 11,000 km subsea cable linking Rio de Janeiro and Fortaleza in Brazil with Puerto Rico and the U.S., purchased a site from Virginia Beach Development Authority to develop a cable landing station for the new cable system. Telefónica International Wholesale Services USA acquired the site in Virginia Beach to build a 20,000 sq-foot data centre to house what was claimed as the first trans-oceanic fibre cable station in the Mid-Atlantic region.
On February 20th Lumos Networks announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Sweden-based EQT Infrastructure for $18.00 per share, representing an enterprise value of approximately $950 million.
Earlier this year, Lumos announced it had acquired Charlotte, North Carolina based DC74 Data Centers and that it had closed its acquisition of Clarity Communications, with a 730 mile fibre network with 75 on-net locations, mainly in North Carolina.
Commenting on the expansion, Timothy G. Biltz, president and CEO of Lumos Networks, said, “Over the next several years a number of undersea cables (are) scheduled to reach the Virginia Beach landing site, which is less than half a mile from Lumos’ dense fibre footprint… I estimate that the two Telefonica cables, MAREA Cable (also funded by Microsoft and Facebook) and the BRUSA Cable, could begin carrying traffic in the third quarter of 2017 and the second quarter of 2018, respectively”.
