Custom Fiber Connectivity Can Benefit Organizations of All Sizes
November 5, 2024
One-size-fits-all may not solve for all needs
The global fiber optics market is on an upward trajectory, with estimates projecting significant growth in the coming years. According to industry analysts, the demand for fiber-optic communication is expected to reach over $80 billion by 2027, driven by the increasing adoption of high-bandwidth applications and Internet-connected devices.
As the demand for fiber grows, so does the need for custom connectivity solutions tailored to solve specific business challenges. Organizations are moving away from standard one-size-fits-all solutions offered by many traditional connectivity providers as they may not solve for all their needs. Instead, they are moving to providers who can offer the innovation and flexibility of custom builds to help them achieve their goals better.
It is a common misconception that custom solutions are always more expensive
Business Cases: Custom Solutions in Action
It’s a common misconception that custom solutions are always more expensive. Providers who have dense fiber networks can offer more affordable options by leveraging existing infrastructure and optimizing network paths. Experienced expert engineering teams can adeptly create solutions that are not only affordable but also more efficient and flexible to address future needs.
When choosing a connectivity provider, look for one who can customize solutions and is willing to solve challenges others often won’t or can’t. Whether building network connectivity to new or underserved areas or designing innovative high-performance solutions, the provider should excel at delivering creative, custom solutions where others see obstacles.
The solutions highlighted below offer some examples of the unique advantages customized fiber solutions provide organizations of all sizes. They address key business challenges and offer innovative solutions that meet and exceed customer’s needs.
Innovative Solutions
For Hyperscalers and large-scale enterprises, the need for robust, secure, high-capacity network connectivity is critical to support massive data requirements while also being flexible enough to quickly scale for future growth needs. Often, this means choosing a connectivity provider with the expert capabilities and resources to design and deploy new custom solutions inside or outside their footprint.
Lightpath’s custom 400 Gbps protected optical circuit for a Hyperscaler was an industry first
Recently, Lightpath completed a custom-built solution for a Hyperscaler that included an industry-first 400 Gbps protected optical circuit utilizing power-efficient and high-performance pluggable technologies. The achievement increases the maximum bandwidth levels that customers can utilize to deploy persistent, mission-critical services while using 80% less electricity.
Lightpath’s challenge was to provide a 400 Gbps geographically diverse and protected circuit over approximately 200 miles, including traversing numerous water crossings and utilizing an average of 8 POPs (points-of-presence) per side of the circuit, all while being able to maintain a very aggressive failover time. Lightpath and Ciena jointly designed the end-to-end solution utilizing Lightpath’s dense fiber plant combined with Ciena’s 6500 packet-optical platform powered by high-performance WaveLogic 5 Nano coherent pluggable optics at the endpoints running over Ciena’s Reconfigurable Line System (RLS) flexible photonic layer along the routes.
The Lightpath solution included optimal fiber routes utilizing optical layer protection to reduce customer circuit handoffs in half while still satisfying the customer requirement of less than 50ms switch times. Two approximately 200-mile wavelength routes were designed utilizing a combination of newly constructed and existing fiber routes. Equipment and locations were identified that would maintain signal integrity, traverse necessary POPs along the routes and maintain the protection services within the stringent failover time specification.
With support for both standard interoperable and extended reach modes, Ciena’s WaveLogic 5 Nano solution was used to deliver the highest 400G pluggable performance in the industry, leveraging 70GBaud symbol rate and requiring 50% less physical space compared to standard transponder deployments.
This is just one example of how Lightpath’s problem-solving approach led to an innovative custom solution to meet and exceed customer’s requirements.
Custom builds can enable more direct routes to critical destinations, reducing latency and improving overall performance
Fiber Built Where You Need It
Custom builds can enable more direct routes to critical destinations, reducing latency and improving overall performance. For industries like healthcare, finance, and media—where real-time data is crucial—this reduction in latency can lead to significant gains in efficiency and service quality, but many other industries can also benefit.
For example, Kollective Automotive is a high-end automotive dealership that needed dependable, high-performance, low-latency Internet connectivity to support its online business, moving applications and data to the Cloud, and interacting with customers, vendors, manufacturers, data centers, and each other.
Lightpath provided a tailor-made solution that met their needs by building new fiber to cover their locations that other providers would not or could not build to, resulting in a network that improved internal communication and supported customer-facing applications, ultimately offering faster transactions and better overall service. This proves that even smaller businesses can benefit from innovation and a willingness to build new, high-quality, custom fiber connectivity—something that was once thought to be reserved for larger enterprises.
As Lightpath continues to expand its capabilities with strategic acquisitions—such as the purchase of United Fiber’s data assets—it is positioning itself to provide even more advanced, customized connectivity expansions to meet growing customer needs.
When Downtime is Not an Option
For organizations needing secure, reliable, and fast connectivity, custom Dark Fiber offers your own fiber right where you need it. This massively scalable, cost-effective solution delivers complete network control. With virtually unlimited bandwidth, it supports massive amounts of business applications and data, all with predictable performance for all high-capacity bandwidth needs. Whether an organization needs a single pair of fibers or a more complex multi-site dark fiber network, solutions can be customized to fit your needs.
For example, St. John’s Episcopal Hospital is a multi-location healthcare provider that faced challenges connecting disparate sites while maintaining secure, reliable communications for critical medical data to support their evolving high-quality care models. The solution needed to be cost-effective while providing fast, reliable, and secure connectivity between multiple critical healthcare facilities for the transmission of medical records and images and for hosting virtual physician consults.
A Lightpath custom solution was created to alleviate the last-mile downtime they had previously experienced with another connectivity provider while increasing reliability, security, and speed. The Lightpath solution included a tailored high-speed Dark Fiber network that connected their locations seamlessly. It also increased security with diverse paths and failover/redundancy for business continuity. Greater reliability was also achieved as St. John’s Episcopal Hospital is the sole user of the Dark Fiber network.
As an added benefit, Lightpath Dark Fiber provides them with relatively fixed costs for bandwidth, and they can easily increase bandwidth as needed. Overall, they are experiencing more control with unlimited scalability and flexibility for future growth. It’s a solution that supports their need for cost-effective, reliable connectivity that enables them to provide high-quality care to their community.
Custom fiber solutions offer more control, cost predictability, and future scalability, supporting growth and critical compliance
By designing a custom network solution, Lightpath helped St. John’s improve patient care and operational efficiency. The hospital’s IT team can now manage resources across locations more effectively, and data transfer between locations is faster and more secure, ensuring compliance with healthcare regulations.
Partnering with a strategic network solutions provider like Lightpath ensures that your network is not just functional but optimized for your unique requirements—helping you stay ahead of the curve. To learn how Lightpath expertise can create a custom solution to best meet the needs of your organization, visit lightpathfiber.com or call us today at 877‑544‑4872.