Lightower Confirms Position as Major Service Provider in Washington, D.C. Metro Area With Completion of 400-Mile Network Expansion

BOXBOROUGH, MA--(Marketwired - Apr 15, 2014) -

• Lightower aggressively expanding All-Fiber Network in D.C, Northern Virginia and Maryland
• Company adds 400 Route Miles in region, including key commercial and Data Center locations
• Large-Scale expansion In response to skyrocketing need for fiber by customers

Lightower Fiber Networks, the premier all-fiber, provider of custom, high-capacity network services that ensure optimal application and business performance, announced today the completion of its 400-mile all-fiber network expansion in the Washington, D.C. metro area. The network expansion delivers increased density between key cities, commercial centers, and data centers in the region. The build out is in direct response to the tremendous demand in the region for high performance bandwidth, driven by the growth across industries like enterprises, educational institutions, government, wireless, social media, and cloud services. 

In all sectors of our economy, end-user demand for network bandwidth is skyrocketing. In a recent industry report, Bell Labs confirmed that total metro area traffic will increase by 560% by 2017. This growth will be driven by IP video, cloud services and the need to reach data centers, which will increasingly be located within metro areas. Washington, D.C. and Northern Virginia are home to some of the busiest and densest data centers in the world, supporting migration to the cloud, data storage and backup, and much of the global Internet traffic that lands on the East Coast from transatlantic fiber optic cables.

"D.C. is home to world-renowned universities, health care organizations, multinational organizations, law firms, the federal government, military agencies and so much more," explained Rob Shanahan, CEO of Lightower. "With traffic volumes growing so quickly in the D.C. metro area, we invested heavily here in order to connect more locations and ensure that we are prepared to serve the growth that we are seeing. This is an aggressive build that delivers on the need for more high performance bandwidth, and comes at a time when organizations rely on networks more than ever before to connect with the world and participate in it."

Lightower's expansion in the D.C. metro area connects the following cities, towns and counties:

• Washington, D.C.
• Montgomery County, MD (Bethesda, Silver Spring and others)
• Arlington, VA
• Culpeper County, VA (Culpeper and others)
• Fairfax County, VA (Alexandria, Centreville, Fairfax, Herndon, Reston and others)
• Fauquier County, VA (Warrenton and others)
• Loudon County, VA (Ashburn, Sterling and others)
• Manassas, VA
• Prince William County, VA (Gainesville and others)
• Lightower can also custom build an all-fiber solution to a town or location specific to your organization

The expanded Lightower network now blankets the D.C. area and delivers bandwidths of up to 100 Gbps across the region. Lightower's suite of all-fiber solutions available to customers includes:

• Ethernet services from 10 Mbps to 100 Gbps
• Wavelength service from 1 Gbps to 100 Gbps
• Dedicated Internet access to 10 Gbps
• Data Center and Cloud connectivity solutions
• Video transport solutions
• Managed Private Optical Networks
• Wireless backhaul solutions
• All-fiber access to Lightower's 7,500+ service locations throughout the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Chicago Metro
• All-fiber access to 130 data centers, 40+ financial exchanges, 115+ carrier hotels and central offices, and 18 Lightower colocation facilities

Lightower also offers the only direct route between Ashburn, VA and New York / New Jersey that is geographically diverse from the I-95 corridor. In December, Lightower announced an expansion of its all-fiber network in the Chicago Metro region. Lightower owns and operates a 20,000-route mile, all-fiber network across the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Chicago metro, with connectivity to Toronto and London. For more information, visit www.lightower.com or call 1.888.LT.FIBER.

About Lightower Fiber Networks
Lightower Fiber Networks is the premier, all-fiber provider of custom, high-capacity network services that ensure optimal application and business performance. Serving enterprise, government, carrier and data center customers, our comprehensive suite of fiber-based solutions is delivered across a robust, dense and highly-reliable network. The company offers over 20,000 route miles of network, providing access to over 7,500 service locations throughout the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Chicago Metro with connectivity to critical international landing sites. Lightower Fiber Networks is headquartered in Boxborough, MA. For more information, visit www.lightower.com or call 1.888.LT.FIBER.