QTS Data Centers and Lumen Technologies announced a major expansion of their partnership to build a next-generation digital backbone for AI, cloud, and hyperscale growth. Lumen will connect its AI-optimized network to 16 new QTS campuses across the United States, including facilities in Arizona, Georgia, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, and Oregon. The integration links QTS’s growing footprint directly to Lumen’s 340,000-route-mile global fiber backbone, while QTS will also adopt Lumen Wavelength services to enhance interconnectivity.
Under the expanded agreement, Lumen will serve QTS in four strategic roles: premier fiber provider, Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) and software-defined networking (SDN) partner, intelligent network fabric provider, and backbone infrastructure builder. These capabilities will deliver ultra-low-latency 400G+ connectivity, automated provisioning, and real-time cloud on-ramps for AI training, inferencing, and hybrid workloads across QTS’s multi-tenant data center environments.
Lumen’s Chief Revenue Officer Ashley Haynes-Gaspar said the collaboration “combines QTS’s scale and data center innovation with Lumen’s AI-ready infrastructure and intelligent network fabric to build the trusted digital backbone for the AI economy.” QTS CTO Brent Bensten added that the partnership ensures both scalability and flexibility to “anticipate our customers’ needs and lead the way in shaping the future of digital infrastructure.”
• Lumen to interconnect 16 new QTS data centers via diverse, high-capacity fiber routes
• QTS to integrate Lumen’s Connectivity Fabric into its multi-tenant environments for AI and cloud workloads
• Partnership delivers end-to-end integration with faster provisioning and lower complexity
• 400G+ backbone supports real-time AI inferencing, model training, and hybrid deployments
• QTS adopts Lumen Wavelength services for redundancy and operational resilience
🌐 Analysis: The partnership deepens QTS’s alignment with carriers building AI-ready backbones and reinforces Lumen’s shift toward AI-centric networking services. The move mirrors similar expansions by Equinix, Digital Realty, and Zayo to support high-density interconnect fabrics for hyperscale and sovereign AI deployments across North America.
QTS Data Centers, headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas, is a leading global provider of digital infrastructure specializing in secure, scalable, and sustainable data center solutions for hyperscalers, enterprises, and government clients. Founded by Chad Williams in the early 2000s and formerly traded as QTS Realty Trust, the company was taken private in 2021 following a $10 billion acquisition by Blackstone Infrastructure Partners. QTS operates massive carrier-neutral campuses across North America and Europe, including key sites in Ashburn, Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago, Oregon, and the Netherlands, delivering colocation, hyperscale build-to-suit, interconnection, and cloud-on-ramp services through its software-defined operations platform. The company has distinguished itself through its “Powered by People” culture, focus on operational excellence, and commitment to renewable energy procurement and sustainability goals. Backed by Blackstone’s capital and infrastructure network, QTS continues to expand rapidly, supporting the AI, cloud, and digital transformation demands of global customers, with more than 2 gigawatts of contracted power capacity across its growing portfolio.
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