Zayo’s 622-Mile Fiber Corridor Links Data Centers in Western US
The company said its long-haul fiber route will connect emerging AI ecosystems, extending data and cloud access across Oregon, California, and Nevada.
Data Center Knowledge | Shane Snider
November 12, 2025
Denver-based infrastructure provider Zayo on Wednesday said a new 622-mile long-haul fiber route has been completed, offering new access to low-latency connections for data centers in the western US.
The Umatilla-Prineville-Reno (UPR) long-haul fiber route will interconnect with Zayo’s existing 19.5 million fiber miles and 1,700 linked data centers throughout the US. The company said the route will deliver new access to underserved regions in Oregon, California, and Nevada.
The route offers an alternative to the 290-mile I-5 fiber corridor, which runs along Interstate 5 through California and Washington.
“Without connectivity, data centers and AI factories are just expensive refrigerators: cold boxes of compute with no way for data to get in or out,” Bill Long, chief product and strategy officer at Zayo, said in a statement. “We’re delivering the capacity and reach where it’s needed to ensure AI can work, scale, and innovate without limits.”
The UPR is built with SMF-29 fiber, multiple conduits, and 13 Zayo-owned signal-boosting in-line amplifiers (ILAs). The project was partially funded by the NTIA Middle Mile Grant Program. Zayo was awarded $92.9 million in the grant to prop up infrastructure across eight states and over 2,100 route miles.
Earlier this year, Zayo unveiled plans to build 5,000 new long-haul route miles by 2030, addressing bandwidth bottlenecks and supporting the increasing infrastructure needs for AI and cloud workloads. The company also plans to construct fiber routes from Texas to Atlanta.
Locations for the projects were based on the need for faster broadband in rural areas and socio-economic factors.
“Zayo is deeply committed to providing connectivity to unserved and underserved communities,” Long said.
Ron Westfall, vice president and networking and infrastructure analyst at HyperFrame Research, told Data Center Knowledge that fiber availability is often an overlooked aspect of the booming data center market. "While a great deal of the AI spotlight is shined on aspects such as the massive scaling of GPU clusters across distributed data centers, I find that fiber availability is improving due to massive, targeted private infrastructure development," he said, adding that private investments is filling gaps left by stalled government infrastructure funding.
"The UPR route is a strategic investment in new long-haul capacity that can create a non-congested, diverse inland path -- proactively addressing a major bottleneck," Westfall said.
A Growing Need
A 2025 Fiber Broadband Association report said that 2.3 times more fiber is needed in the US to support AI performance, scalability, and security. The US is expected to see hyperscale data center capacity triple by 2029, according to the report.
“The need for fast, secure, low-latency connections between hyperscale data centers has accelerated with the birth of AI,” Deborah Kish, vice president of research and workforce development at FBA, said in a release.
HyperFrame's Westfall said demand is pushing data center construction into new regions, so fiber needs are sprawling.
"This expansion is essential because power constraints are forcing the construction of new data center hubs in more remote areas, requiring fiber providers to proactively build new digital backbones to connect these separated compute locations to the primary internet exchange points," Westfall said.
