Midwest FiberPath says it will build a 1,200-mile multi-conduit long-haul backbone intended to support the increased traffic created by artificial intelligence (AI) in east-west and north-south directions in the Midwest. It will provide what it describes as next-generation carrier mesh diversity.
The press release lays out four technical criteria supporting the project. The multi-conduit design will enable diverse carrier deployments within a single controlled right-of-way. The project will feature direct railroad corridor routing, which is designed to minimize latency and optimize route efficiency.
The system will include infrastructure engineered for open line systems and next-generation optical transport platforms. Midwest FiberPath plans to provide scalable pathway capacity supporting high fiber-count cables and long-term growth for AI traffic volumes.
The long-haul topography will have three primary corridors:
- Joliet, Illinois to Des Moines, Iowa to Council Bluffs, Iowa: This multi-conduit route will support hyperscale east-west traffic fabrics between Chicago interconnection ecosystems and numerous Iowa compute campuses.
- Minneapolis, Minnesota to Des Moines, Iowa to Kansas City, Missouri: This corridor, also multi-conduit, will run north-south and enable regional mesh diversity and alternative long-haul routing across the central U.S.
- Minneapolis, Minnesota to Cedar Rapids, Iowa to Joliet, Illinois: This will be a diagonal extension reinforcing Iowa as a center-node aggregation point for multi-directional traffic exchange.
“In our current age, AI is going to continue to grow, and so will its infrastructure needs.” Taylor Gates, IT Director at Midwest FiberPath, said in a press release.
“As these continue to grow, the underlying infrastructure will need to drastically improve to accommodate this growth. Our purpose-built architecture allows carriers and hyperscalers to deploy infrastructure with long-term flexibility while maintaining route diversity across one of the fastest-growing digital infrastructure regions in North America.”
Midwest FiberPath, LLC is a digital infrastructure company formed by Hawkeye Land Co. and Anderson Pacific Capital, LLC. Hawkeye is partnering on the project.
Earlier this month, Iowa Communications Network (ICN) announced a full migration onto a new 100 Gigabit route to Denver. This previous path employed a combination of four separate 10-Gigabit (4x10G) circuit connections running from Council Bluffs to the CoreSite Data Center in Denver. ICN said that the approach often proved unstable.
