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Dark Fiber continued :
As a result, investment firms and major corporations received a windfall of added investment capital. Because telecommunication and more specifically fiber, was considered a great investment in the future, a large portion of these funds was invested in the expansion of optical fiber routes nationwide to enhance telecommunication infrastructures.
Unfortunately, after the crash of 2000, these funds dried up. This caused the dot-com bubble to burst. Many of the companies that had the rights to these fiber networks either went bankrupt, or, had to abandon their goals of utilizing this fiber. This resulted in hundreds of thousands of miles of “unlit” (dark) fiber. Dark fiber is optical fiber that is lying in the ground unutilized.
Dark fiber and opportunity:
Independent telecom providers are now buying the rights to this fiber and lighting it to meet the needs of their customers. This presents great opportunities for not only these providers who get great bargains for unutilized networks, but also pass these savings on to business customers. Until now, it was common for businesses to pay an average of about $5000 a month for a 45 mbps (megabits per second) DS3 circuit. Now, due to utilization of formerly dark fiber, it is not unusual to find a 100 mbps circuit for as little as $2500.
Another advantage of the utilization of formerly dark fiber is that businesses that may have had to pay tens of thousands of dollars to have their buildings lit for fiber (because traditional fiber routes were remote from their buildings), now often discover that dark fiber might be passing within feet of their building. This close proximate can reduce the cost of lighting (running fiber to) their building to almost nothing.
Dark fiber and redundancy :
Yet another advantage emerging from the utilization of dark fiber networks is redundancy. Redundancy is extremely important to businesses that view their communication networks as mission critical. For many businesses, if telecom services are lost, business is virtually shut down. Redundancy as it relates to telecommunications is the ability to receive services (telephone, internet, and/or networking) from more than one, unrelated source. Newly lit dark fiber can often be an excellent source of redundancy because it often does not route through central telephone offices like traditional T1 and DS3 do. If all sources of business bandwidth run through the central office, then when that central office goes down, all businesses served by this central office, lose their ability to communicate. Because dark fiber routes often bypass central offices, they serve as an excellent source of redundancy. Most major businesses seek telecom redundancy to prevent the huge losses that are incurred when telecom circuits go down.
Dark fiber availability and pricing :
Assessing dark fiber availability and pricing is a complex process that requires both expertise and special tools. We offer this assessment for free and without obligation. For a free assessment of dark fiber availability and pricing, please complete the short pricing tool at the top of this page.
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