Communications infrastructure provider Zayo has announced plans to build more than 5,000 route miles of long-haul fiber across the US to meet the growing demands of AI workloads.
The number is in addition to the 5,000 route miles of fiber the company has already built.
According to the Zayo, the build is essential to "averting a potential bandwidth gap in the US," as AI-driven data center capacity is expected to grow by as much as up to six times over the next five years.
To support the AI demands, Zayo said it's planning to build five new routes.
The new routes are: Chicago to Columbus; Las Vegas to Reno, Nevada; Atlanta to Ashburn, Virginia; Minneapolis to Chicago; and Columbus to Indianapolis.
In addition to this, Zayo noted that it will construct overbuilds at seven key existing routes over the next five years.
The company's overbuild routes are: Denver to Dallas; Denver to Omaha to Chicago; Denver to Salt Lake City; Salt Lake City to Reno; Dallas to Atlanta; Columbus to Ashburn; and Phoenix to Tucson.
Zayo states that the routes will support direct, low-latency, and scalable paths between key data center hubs and forecasted growth areas.
"Keeping pace with the next wave of AI growth will require new long-haul networks to enable the rapid scaling of capacity needs in both existing and emerging AI data center markets. In 2024, Zayo saw significant AI-driven demand for long-haul routes, including more than $1 billion in AI-related deals and an additional $3 billion in [the] pipeline. This demand shows no signs of letting up,” said Steve Smith, chief executive officer at Zayo.
"As the complexity of long-haul builds continues to be prohibitive to many providers, Zayo remains the only company building long-haul routes at scale to lead this next phase of infrastructure growth.”
Zayo chose the route locations "based on expected data center growth, power availability, existing capacity constraints, and other regional characteristics." The company added that it will announce additional routes and investments throughout the year.
The company's North American network spans 16.5 million fiber miles, with a further 700,000 fiber miles plus 14 new 400G-enabled wavelength routes added last year. Zayo also reached a petabit of active Waves services last year and said it expects its North American network to be fully 400G enabled by the end of this year.
Colorado-based Zayo previously acquired fiber infrastructure and network services company Globalways GmbH back in 2023 as part of its European expansion plans.
The company was also reportedly keen to buy US tower company Crown Castle's fiber assets last year before the latter entered discussions with TPG late last month.
