What have been Allied Fiber's achievements in the Caribbean over the last year?
This past year Allied Fiber signed a 20-year Indefeasible Right of Use (IRU) agreement with C&W, a large pan-Caribbean provider, to expand its route between Miami and Jacksonville with colocation and dark fibre infrastructure. This agreement emphasised the need for neutral colocation and dark fibre for global network operations seeking to better serve existing business and wholesale customers that need access to the US market.
What new opportunities for expansion have you been exploring across the region
Developing Ethernet as well as Internet Exchange Points within the Allied Fiber colocation facilities have been a priority for our continued expansion. They will provide more proximate and lower latency connections that will at the same time reduce costs for network operators of all kinds. As a result of this approach, access to the Internet becomes more open, decentralised and totally neutral. These exchange principles will benefit access providers, telecom operators, content providers and social media sites alike, in addition to their consumers. Local as well as distributed cloud computing is also an expansion opportunity we are seeing great interest in along the route.
How are you looking to further serve your customers and differentiate from your competitors?
The Allied Fiber distributed, local neutral colocation business is just beginning to come in to view and become understood for many in the industry. We define the customers we serve as “network operators”, so as to capture the general nature of what they all do. Whether carriers, or service providers offering network services to others, or as enterprise, or content providers that do not, they all operate networks. All of the customers that we serve have a need for dark fibre that they light themselves and, or neutral colocation facilities to install their own equipment in to light that fibre and, or gain access to other networks to interconnect with. Our differentiation is in the fact that we offer both products as an integrated system across a long haul span coupled with local access points along the route. This is not what any carrier that has its own long haul fibre in the US does, or can do. Carriers are not and cannot be neutral. Our pan is to continue to grow our model for the customers that require what we provide.
What are your strategic priorities for the region in 2016?
There is demand and need for the Allied Fiber neutral colocation and dark fibre product all along the route we have selected. Many cell towers, schools, hospitals, data centers, towns, people and machines out there want and need direct access to dark fibre and neutral colo, so wherever we go we will see demand. It is a question of how much and when.
What do you hope to achieve by attending Capacity Caribbean 2016?
Advancements in technology, the adoption of social media, and historic economic growth through investment in and the development of networks have changed the entire dynamic in the telecommunications sector on a global scale. In order to understand the local access issues and limitations at hand, it is critically important to first understand the broader issues. Our hope is to address these issues from a macro perspective, inciting a deep conversation around this timely topic and educating the Capacity Caribbean 2016 audience.
