State and regional fiber network expansion continues with the announcement that Zayo Bandwidth is joining forces with ten independent telcos to form Colorado Communications Transport, LLC (CCT).
Besides Zayo, the founding members of CCT include Agate Mutual Telephone Cooperative Association, Inc., Eastern Slope Rural Telephone Association, Inc., Nunn Telephone Company, PC Telcom, Peetz Communications, LLC, Plains Cooperative Telephone Association, Inc., Roggen Telephone Cooperative Company, Stoneham Cooperative Telephone Corp., Wiggins Telephone Association and Willard Telephone Company.
“It is an honor for Zayo to be working cooperatively with the member companies in an effort to enhance service and network quality for the communities in this region,” said John Scarano, COO & Co-founder of Zayo Group and President of Zayo Bandwidth in a press release. “We look forward to collaborating with this team in helping to connect Colorado.”
The network is set to open in late 2010 and will provide high speed bandwidth capacity and access to major traffic aggregation points, primarily throughout rural Northeast Colorado. Zayo also intends to interconnect the network with a similar effort in rural Nebraska.
CCT follows a familiar model, where independent telcos and their partners form regional fiber networks to interconnect with each other and important aggregation points. Many of these regional fiber networks belong to the Indatel Group, an association formed to promote their activities and share best practices.
Good on Zayo for partnering with the telephone co-ops. Hopefully this gets those guys enough bandwidth to bring those communities to parity with Qwest/Comcast duopoly areas, which actually have it pretty good. My guess is that the fiber backbone is replacing a bunch of T1s/T3s in the area, most of which are fed by Qwest..betcha they won't be terribly happy about this.
Wonder what internet pricing per megabit will be once Zayo gets the network online, in some rural market?