Fiber Focused: Windstream Wholesale Adds New Dark Fiber Route

Windstream Wholesale said that its 145-mile dark fiber route between Little Rock (AK) and Memphis (TN) is operational. The route extends the 310-mile “T-Rock Express,” which connects Little Rock and Tulsa (OK). That network went into operation in August 2022. This means that Windstream Wholesale now connects Tulsa to Memphis. The entire 455 fiber-mile route between Tulsa and Memphis offers 432-count high capacity fiber. Windstream Wholesale defines its Intelligent Converged Optical Network (ICON) as an open and disaggregated networking infrastructure. The company said that it has deployed an integrated optical time domain reflectometer (OTDR) system across most of the network. The system provides real-time route monitoring. This speeds alerts and reduces restoration time in the case of any fiber cuts.