For enterprises around the globe, 2025 was a year of acceleration. Data demand exploded thanks to the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence, the maturation of cloud-native applications, and the digitization of critical industries. At Zayo, our mission has always been to connect what’s next, but lately, “what’s next” is happening faster than ever before.
Throughout 2025, we focused intently on a singular goal: enabling our customers’ digital transformation through a network that is not just bigger, but smarter and easier to use. We expanded our footprint and fundamentally reimagined how businesses interact with their infrastructure and network solutions.
From the launch of an industry-leading Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) platform to the complete 400G enablement of our North American network, 2025 was defined by three core pillars: creating an easy and intelligent network experience, modernizing our infrastructure for resilience, and expanding our reach to fuel the AI revolution. Here is a look back at how we moved the needle this year.
AI Enablement & Strategic Expansion
If data is the oil of the digital economy, fiber is the pipeline. The explosive growth of AI has reshaped the geography of the Internet, creating new data centers in places previously underserved by high-capacity fiber. In 2025, we went where AI was growing.
Building Routes for the Intelligence Era
As part of our strategy to expand the critical infrastructure powering AI growth across the U.S., we completed the Umatilla-Prineville-Reno (UPR) route. This project provides the first direct inland connection between two of the region’s fastest-growing AI and cloud hubs.
We also broke ground on several other vital AI-focused routes, including:
- Chicago to Columbus
- Chicago to Minneapolis
- Phoenix to Tucson
But that’s not all. We kicked off major overbuild projects largely driven by AI demand, connecting cities like Omaha to Dallas, St. Louis to Indianapolis, and Denver to Salt Lake City. In total, we added 899 route miles and a staggering 1.15 million fiber miles in North America alone this year. Globally, that number surpassed 1.3 million fiber miles added.
Going Global and Hyper-Local
Our expansion wasn’t limited to the United States. Recognizing the manufacturing boom and “near-shoring” trends, we introduced our first-owned PoP in Mexico, located in Monterrey. This provides a critical high-capacity bridge for cross-border operations, supporting the massive influx of data from advanced manufacturing and logistics.
Domestically, we made a transformative move by agreeing to acquire Crown Castle’s fiber solutions business. With Crown Castle’s metro-focused fiber assets, Zayo’s network will expand into key areas, working seamlessly with our long-haul networks to connect data centers nationwide. This means better connectivity for cities and rural communities alike. By adding around 90,000 route miles of fiber from Crown Castle, we’re boosting our network reach to over 70,000 on-net locations, giving businesses the reliable networks they need to power cloud computing and AI, scale up, and thrive.
An Easy & Intelligent Network Experience
In the past, provisioning enterprise-grade network services often felt like a battle against bureaucracy, characterized by slow timelines, opaque processes, and rigid contracts. In 2025, we committed to changing that narrative. We believe that buying high-capacity connectivity should be as simple as spinning up a cloud service.
Delivering Speed with Quick-Connect
Time is the most valuable currency in business. Recognizing this, we expanded our Quick-Connect capability to over 150 data center locations. This initiative was designed to eliminate the notorious “construction wait” that plagues network deployment. By pre-provisioning capacity in high-demand data centers, we achieved a 100% on-time performance (OTP) rate for these orders, with an average delivery time of just five days. For our customers, this meant the difference between missing a market opportunity and capitalizing on it instantly.
Revolutionizing Control with DynamicLink
Perhaps our most significant leap forward in customer experience was the launch of DynamicLink. While the industry has talked about Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) for years, DynamicLink delivered the most comprehensive experience on the market.
DynamicLink allows customers to quote, order, and activate connectivity in real-time. Whether it’s scaling bandwidth up for a seasonal spike or establishing a new connection to a cloud provider, DynamicLink puts the control directly in the hands of the network architect. It represents the future of agility — a network that moves as fast as the software running on top of it.
Modernizing the Foundation
A digital future requires a robust physical foundation. As bandwidth demands soar, legacy infrastructure simply cannot keep up. That’s why 2025 saw aggressive investment in modernizing our existing network to support the heavy lifting required by modern workloads.
The 400G Standard
In 2025, we reached a massive milestone: our North American Wavelengths network is now 100% 400G-enabled.
Why does this matter? Because 400G is the new currency for data-intensive applications. From training Large Language Models (LLMs) to streaming 4K video, the bandwidth requirements of 2025 crushed 10G and 100G limitations. Offering quadruple the capacity, 400G fiber optic networks empower our customers to scale seamlessly and without constraints.
Alongside this, we deployed 11 new 400G IP Points of Presence (PoPs) and 35 400G Optical PoPs, bringing high-capacity on-ramps closer to users at the edge. We also became the first network provider to introduce 100G Ethernet, ideal for enterprises seeking high-bandwidth redundancy. Now, you can run one or more high-bandwidth Wavelength and supplement them with 100G Ethernet for ultimate reliability.
Security and Automation through Advanced Monitoring
You can’t fix what you can’t see, which is why we invested heavily in network monitoring.
In 2025, we added 2,251 route miles of metro fiber monitoring and 1,631 route miles of long-haul fiber monitoring. These advanced monitoring systems allow us to pinpoint fiber cuts or degradation down to the meter, detecting cuts within minutes and saving hours in mean time to repair (MTTR).
We also advanced our automation capabilities to reduce service impact. By “air-gapping” critical long-haul traffic from metro activity and automating routine maintenance, we’ve created a more secure, resilient network environment. Advanced monitoring systems transform data into actionable insights, improving operational efficiency and reducing downtime.
Looking Ahead: The Infrastructure of Tomorrow
The defining lesson of 2025 is clear: enterprises require a network infrastructure that does more than merely react to change. They need a foundation designed to drive it forward. From the software layer of DynamicLink to the physical layer of new long-haul fiber, we have built a machine capable of powering the next decade of innovation.
We are committed to enabling the digital future, ensuring that whether you are a startup training your first AI model or a global enterprise connecting continents, Zayo provides the resilient, high-speed foundation you need to succeed. Thank you for building the future with us.