Kirkland, Washington (October 21, 2024) – Ziply® Fiber today announced that its “Northern Link Route” – a 400 Gig, low-latency, high-capacity long-haul transport route connecting Hillsboro, Portland, Seattle, Spokane, Missoula, Billings, Minneapolis, Chicago and dozens of other major cities in between – is ready for service along the western half of the route, with full service to and from Chicago launching by the end of the year. The route, which Ziply Fiber expects will offer the lowest latency of any West-East connection from the Pacific Northwest to the Midwest, will enable commercial customers to access high-capacity 400 Gig wavelength, 100 Gig wavelength, 10 and 100 Gig transit services, as well as dark fiber offerings.
“Ziply’s Northern Link Route offers tremendous diversity and redundancy for the more commonly used Canadian routes that run between Chicago and the Pacific Northwest,” said Chris Gellos, vice president and general manager of commercial for Ziply Fiber. “While typical West-East routes offer 10 or perhaps 100 Gig transport, Ziply Fiber’s new route will provide 400 Gig wavelength service, four times the capacity offered by most connections today.”
To enable the Northern Link Route, Ziply Fiber is taking advantage of coherent optics technology from Ciena (NYSE: CIEN), a global leader in networking systems, services, and software.
“Between wanting an easy connection into the Seattle Internet Exchange or trading traffic coming from Asia looking for the lowest latency route to Chicago, we see dozens of use cases for this service,” added Gellos. “This cutting-edge network promised unprecedented speeds and reliability, ideal for carriers and hyperscalers alike.”
Commercial customers will also benefit from the entirely subterranean nature of the route, making it much more immune to natural disasters like wildfires or storms that have caused damage over the years on the commodity routes and forced the rerouting of internet traffic. In many ways, Ziply’s Northern Link Route provides a safer, more reliable, diverse option than what exists today.
