Allied Fiber has signed a 20-year Indefeasible Right of Use (IRU) agreement with Georgia-based ILEC Planters Communications, marking the latest in a string of new agreements it has signed for its dark fiber and colocation network.
Under the terms of the agreement, Planters Communications will get access to dark fiber and colocation space at five of Allied Fiber's facilities in Georgia -- Hahira, Warner Robins, Ashburn, Barnesville and Fargo.
For Planters, which is a subsidiary of Planters Telephone Cooperative, the benefit of this deal is accelerating its reach without the expense of building out additional facilities. By gaining access to Allied Fiber's facilities, Planters Communications is establishing an additional fiber route that traverses the southeast region of Georgia through the cities of Atlanta and Macon, and the town of Jacksonville, Fla.
The nearly 800-mile network will be used to support Planters Communication's ongoing initiative to provide Ethernet backhaul, IP Transport services and interconnection access to carrier networks across the Southeast.
Planters said that by connecting at various points along Allied Fiber's Southeast Route, it can provide direct and diverse physical layer access to its customers located between Atlanta and Jacksonville, Fla. while expanding the scope of service offerings the company and its partners can offer to consumers and businesses in this region of the state.
What this deal illustrates is that there's a growing demand from independent telcos like Planters to get dark fiber connectivity to serve Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets such as Screven and Effingham Counties in Georgia and get connections into major Internet access points. Prior to the emergence of alternative players like Allied Fiber, independent ILECs like Planters had little choice but to work with larger incumbent telcos like AT&T (NYSE: T) to get wholesale services.
Planters is just one of a number of new agreements that Allied Fiber has signed with other service providers needing access into the Southeast part of the United States. It also signed a similar deal with C&W Networks, a large pan-Caribbean provider, which will use the network to expand its route between Miami and Jacksonville with colocation and dark fiber infrastructure.
For more:
- see the release
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