Monday, January 20, 2020

Windstream adds to long-haul with Infinera’s FlexILS Line System

Windstream Wholesale will add over 1,000 miles to its Next Gen flexible ultra-long-haul fiber network using Infinera’s FlexILS line system.

The route from Salt Lake City to Portland and Seattle will provide diverse, low-latency connectivity to markets in the Pacific Northwest.

Windstream also announced that, as part of an ongoing program to enhance its long-haul network, it has increased the capacity of several major routes to 48 Tbps.


The overlay is powered by Infinera’s FlexILS line system. The flexible grid-compliant open optical line system features C+L-band support and colorless-directionless-contentionless (CDC) ROADM.

“Our new route to the Pacific Northwest, along with the overlay of existing routes with Infinera’s FlexILS technology, is a response to increasing customer demand for bandwidth,” said Joe Scattareggia, executive vice president of Windstream Wholesale. “These ongoing initiatives pave the way for Windstream Wholesale to meet customers’ needs for high-quality, low-latency services across our most popular routes for years to come.”

“We are delighted to support Windstream with solutions that enable them to meet their customers’ evolving need for high-bandwidth, low-latency services,” said Nick Walden, senior vice president, worldwide sales, Infinera. “Infinera’s uniquely scalable C+L solution is an ideal fit to meet Windstream’s initiatives for future bandwidth needs by significantly increasing and, in some cases, more than doubling capacity on its existing fiber links.

Windstream Wholesale previously announced an overlay of its Dallas to Atlanta route.

Windstream signs its largest wavelengths deal

Windstream Wholesale signed its largest capacity wavelengths deal to date. A major hyperscale customer (unnamed) will purchase wavelengths to interconnect data centers in key cities in the United States.

Windstream said this deal, combined with additional wave capacity contracted in October, represents 5.7 terabits of capacity – the most sold in any single month at Windstream Wholesale.

Windstream Wholesale’s coast-to-coast long-haul and regional express fiber-optic network provides high-speed optical Wavelengths to support today’s massive data demands stemming from cloud computing, multimedia and bandwidth intensive applications. Our optical Wavelengths service features unique, diverse routes with high-speed connections from attractive Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets back to the most popular carrier hotels, data centers, cable landing stations and 1,200+ 1G to 100G capable POPs in Tier 1 markets in the country.

“Our flexibility and customer tailored routes coupled with our unique domestic network density in Tiers 1, 2 and 3 cities have positioned us as the ‘go-to’ provider for international carriers, content providers, fiber operators and others needing domestic diversity and redundancy,” said Joe Scattareggia, executive vice president for Wholesale Sales at Windstream. “Our Wholesale business has been on a steady growth trajectory for some time. Hitting our single highest month of capacity sold is a great accomplishment and reflects the inflection point of marketplace bandwidth demand and our network solutions designed to meet this demand.”