- Windstream is seeing demand for both lit and dark fiber
- It recently announced a lit-fiber deal with Hurricane Electric
- But it’s more coy on naming customers than Lumen is, primarily because Windstream is a private company
Windstream Wholesale is building a fiber spur to one of Hurricane Electric’s data centers in the San Francisco Bay area, a primary location in Hurricane Electric’s global service provider and co-location network.
“The core thing we sell to Hurricane and other hyperscalers is long-haul between data centers,” John Nishimoto, senior VP of Product and Marketing for Windstream Wholesale, told Fierce Network.
Fierce asked if Windstream is seeing the same kind of demand for long-haul fiber networks as Lumen Technologies due to the artificial intelligence (AI) craze. For instance, Lumen won a big deal with Microsoft in July, and on its most recent earnings call Lumen said it had $8 billion of deals in the works to provide hyperscalers with its Private Connectivity Fabric.
Nishimoto was non-committal, given that Windstream is a private company that doesn’t always announce its big deals. But in terms of the general landscape for long-haul fiber, he said there’s good demand for both lit fiber and dark fiber.
Windstream is definitely seeing demand for lit fiber, such as the deal with Hurricane Electric, he said. It’s getting requests for multiple 400 gig services between data centers and to new data center campuses, as well. “We’re expanding our network to meet that demand, whether new routes, more capacity or lighting certain data centers being constructed,” he said.
Windstream Wholesale is also seeing more demand for dark fiber. The deal between Lumen and Microsoft is a dark-fiber play. Some really big companies – such as hyperscalers – buy fiber from Windstream or whomever and put their own equipment on it, light it themselves and operate their own services, he said. “They’re giant companies,” Nishimoto commented.
The dark-fiber customers “are asking for high-fiber counts” as high as 864 fibers, he said. That’s because new data centers are being built for GPU capacity, which is driving the high-fiber-count demand.
Although he declined to name any Windstream customers, other than Hurricane Electric, Facebook has previously gone on record saying that it uses companies such as Windstream, Lumen and Zayo when it builds long-haul networks.
For instance, Facebook built a fiber network across the state of Indiana in 2021, and at the time a company executive said Facebook views Windstream, Zayo and Lumen as partners in such projects.
Windstream is still in the process of merging with Uniti
Windstream is headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas, and operates three brands, including Windstream Wholesale, Windstream Enterprise and Kinetic.
Currently, Windstream is in the process of re-merging with Uniti. But until the $13.4 billion deal closes, the two companies will operate separately, and it’s “business as usual,” according to a company spokesperson.
