Allied Fiber Update

I just returned from being at Comptel in Dallas, TX from Sunday through Wednesday. It was the first time Allied Fiber officially exhibited at an industry conference. Our message was well received by a vast majority of the market - those in search of new dark fiber for lease - and the feedback was extremely positive.

We met with 40+ companies all with a desire to lease dark fiber for long and short haul as well as for cellular backhaul.  Aside from the volume of demand they each possessed for dark fiber what was interesting was the range of applications. I tried to keep a record of everything we came across:

1. Metro network looking for long haul dark fiber to connect their own metro networks and provide their own backhaul

2. Long Haul transport providers looking for fiber to gain access to rural networks previously unreachable as on-net connections, saving time, money and improving quality

3. RLEC wants fiber to interconnect its own markets bypassing the RBOC

4. International carrier extending network within the US on-net type 1 for IX Peering access

5. International carrier wants a cross-country dark fiber lease for connecting the international undersea cable landings using the US as the major thoroughfare for global capacity transport

6. Wireless backhaul provider wants to create a new fiber-based and microwave tower footprint

7. Mobile service provider wants new towers for serving area density, 4G video apps and to lower their opex on backhaul circuits at the same time

8. ISP forms ISP buyers group to lease fiber, light waves, lower their own transport costs to the cost of maintenance to save tens of thousands of $ per month

9. WISP creates new business model by reaching in to new markets previously unaddressed and as first mover will gain significant market share

10. Financial trading firm leases their own dark fiber between NY and CHI to improve the round trip latency for their trade execution producing greater volumes and bottom line results. The annual revenue benefit for the $1.2 million IRU investment is projected to exceed $100million.

11. Enterprise leases dark fiber to create their own layer 1 wide area network infrastructure improving quality, control, expanding their available and growth capacity from 10 Gbps to 400 Gbps all while reducing their overall costs.

12. Large web content provider wants to lease dark fiber to improve performance, control and reduce costs

As Allied Fiber begins to execute Letters of Intent with each of the buyers for the dark fiber on our new routes it will be also be interesting to see how many users fall in to each of these application categories and how many new applications there are beyond these.