The needs of artificial intelligence (AI) and the decentralization of computer activities are driving a lot of activity in the long-haul fiber sector. Two fiber providers — Light Source Communications (LSC) and Ziply Fiber — made separate long-haul transport announcements this week.
Ziply’s Portland to Chicago route
On Monday, Ziply Fiber announced that its “Northern Link Route,” which links the Pacific Northwest with the Midwest, is fully live. The 2,100-mile low-latency, high capacity 400 Gig network connects Portland, Seattle, Spokane, Missoula, Billings, Bismark, Fargo, Minneapolis, Madison, Chicago, and other locations.
Limited service on the western portion of the long-haul fiber network has been available since October 2024. Ziply said that roundtrip latency between Seattle and Chicago is 39.5 ms using bit error rate (BER) testing.
“When high-speed traders have millions of dollars on the line, milliseconds matter,” Chris Gellos, Ziply Fiber’s commercial general manager, said in a press release.
“Between financial institutions, data center operators, hyperscalers, and many others, we are carrying traffic today for a wide range of industries that need ultra-low latency combined with the shortest path from the Midwest to the Pacific Northwest and that’s what Ziply Fiber’s Northern Link Route delivers.”
In November 2024, Bell Canada Enterprises said it was acquiring Ziply Fiber for approximately $3.65 billion. Previously — in March 2023 — Ziply Fiber announced that it would acquire Ptera, a fiber and fixed wireless provider in Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho. It was the fourth announced acquisition in less than a year for the company.
LSC links Texas, Oklahoma
The day after Ziply’s announcement, LSC announced that it would build a 400-mile in-line amplifier (ILA) long-haul dark fiber network connecting Amarillo, Texas with Oklahoma City, Stillwater, and Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The 400-mile route is aimed at supporting hyperscalers, neoclouds machine learning and other high performance computing applications. Construction, which is expected to wrap up in the first quarter of next year, is being conducted concurrently with building of a LSC long-haul fiber network link between Tulsa and St. Louis. Both will connect with LCS’s 130-mile dark fiber metro ring in the Tulsa area.
“Bridging these markets is a critical new catalyst for next-generation computing,” LSC CEO Debra Freitas said in a press release about the long-haul fiber network. “The combination of this route, along with our St. Louis-Tulsa corridor, creates a powerful regional interconnection opportunity for the Central U.S., delivering the massive capacity and diverse pathways required for the AI era.”
LCS announced completion of a dark fiber network in Kansas City, Missouri in June 2025. At the time, the company said that it would complete targets in Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Tulsa during the balance of the year.
