The company, formerly CenturyLink, said the fibre will connect major hubs of business and finance, providing dense coverage in key areas to connect multiple enterprise buildings and third-party data centres to the Lumen network.
Annette Murphy (pictured), the former Zayo executive who is now managing director of Lumen in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said: “Our new fibre infrastructure investments in Europe demonstrate the continued commitment that Lumen has to this market, and to powering the next wave of growth and innovation for customers in the fourth industrial revolution.”
Lumen built a new route between the French city of Lyon to Geneva, on the Swiss-French border, but also diverting via three other French cities, Grenoble, Chambéry and Annecy, taking the total distance to 300km.
The Spanish expansion is also connects the border with France. Lumen said it had completed its national fibre ring by adding a new segment of more than 280km between the city of Salou, near Tarragona, south-west of Barcelona, to the French border.
In Barcelona itself, Lumen has built a new metro network and connected to the MAREA transatlantic subsea cable landing station in Sopelana. The national Lumen network ring in Spain is approximately 1,700km in length.
Murphy said: “Companies are facing new challenges that require them to harness massive amounts of data at almost unimaginable speeds. The agile, reliable and secure Lumen network helps customers to leverage their data and adopt next-gen apps to unleash their business potential and deliver amazing digital experiences.”
The length of the national Lumen network rings is approximately 5,600km in France and 680km in Switzerland. The global Lumen network route has 720,000km of fibre and connects to more than 180,000 on-net buildings and 2,200 public and private third-party data centres. The company’s European routes now total 38,000km.
