Florida-based Uniti Fiber on Tuesday announced its plans to offer Ethernet services of up to 200 Gbps in the Quad-Cities, twice the speed will hat is available in the cities now. The company said the state-of-the-art data transport system is attractive to the firms that move large packets of data electronically, such as medical centers and schools.
The Quad Cities is a region of four counties in northwest Illinois and Southeastern consisting of four principal cities: Davenport and Bettendorf in Iowa, and Rock Island and Moline in Illinois. These 4 cities are the center of the Quad Cities Metropolitan Area. In total, the quad cities have an estimated population of above 380,000.
Senior officials of Uniti Fiber said the company plans to invest about US$5 million in the Quad-Cities over the next five years during the first stage of its investment. The company plans to double that investment over the next few years. The work includes two Mississippi River fiber crossings and creating about 128 fiber kilometers of the network over the next 18 months. This project will make Uniti the only firm in the Quad-Cities to offer dark fiber, which is unused optical fibers in a cable, to major wireless operators.
Uniti Fiber will do most of the network construction by the end of 2017. The company officials said the project will bring new opportunities to the Quad-Cities. Officials also added that the network is designed to support the 4G services of one of America’s top four wireless carriers. Non-disclosure agreements with the operator prevent the officials from disclosing the name.
Though the network will support 4G services in the near future, the exciting thing in building an optical fiber network is that it will support the 5G. Uniti Fiber has not decided if it will establish a Quad-Cities office but the firm will employ local people to build the network, adding the company’s presence in Galesburg, Peoria and Macomb helped steer the firm to the Quad-Cities.
The project will provide new and enhanced connectivity options with major commercial data centers from Chicago to St. Louis. Uniti Fiber’s investment solidifies potential growth opportunities for the area, particularly for industries like healthcare, data centers, financial services and other companies requiring high-speed networks looking to establish a presence in these regions.
Currently, Uniti’s infrastructure includes more than 590,000 fiber strand miles over a 19-state region, connecting more than 5,200 customer locations with local access to more than 2,500 municipalities and dozens of utilities. Uniti Fiber has a substantial network throughout the state of Illinois and hence it plans to focus on the smaller markets that might not have as much competition.
Uniti Fiber is a division of Communications Sales and Leasing, Inc., a publicly traded Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT). Uniti Fiber is a leading provider of infrastructure solutions, including cell site backhaul and small cell for wireless operators, and Ethernet, Wavelengths and Dark Fiber for telecom carriers and enterprises. Whether the challenge is improving network reach and quality, increasing capacity or maintaining cost certainty for the future, Uniti Fiber delivers a custom-designed, technology-agnostic and access-agnostic solution. Uniti Fiber’s growing infrastructure spans around 950,000 fiber kilometers connecting over 5,200 customer locations with local access to 2,600 municipalities and dozens of utilities enabling the company to deliver its customized solutions.
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