Fiber provider Zayo will be connecting thousands of macro towers in 30 markets across 21 states, in what the company says is its largest mobile infrastructure contract to date.

Zayo will be doing the backhaul work for an unnamed “major wireless carrier” and it includes deployment of dark fiber to “support the carrier’s strategy of improving coverage and capacity across its network to accommodate increasing traffic and to prepare for 5G,” according to Zayo. In a tweet, Zayo characterized the work as both densification and groundwork for 5G.

The company noted that this new win is an expansion of an agreement from back in late 2016, and that the two contracts taken in total involve thousands of new macro sites and represent Zayo’s largest win in providing mobile network infrastructure. Although the new contract expansion doesn’t involve small cells, Zayo said that it is deploying small cells for this particular customer under other contracts.

“This undertaking is the result of a trusted relationship with the customer,” said Dan Caruso, chairman and CEO of Zayo, in a statement. “As they continue to densify to meet the growing demand for bandwidth, dark fiber provides the optimal long-term solution.”

Zayo said that the deployment will both leverage existing fiber and construction of “hundreds of route miles of fiber.” In some cases, existing Ethernet connections are being replaced with dark fiber, Zayo added.

“Mobile Infrastructure projects like these leverage existing fiber networks,” Caruso said. “They also result in further network expansion, which is then leveraged for other customer projects, including healthcare, school districts and other wireless carriers.”

 

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Categories Backhaul, dark fiber, macro towers, Network Infrastructure, Zayo