Lightpath has unveiled plans for a new 70-plus-mile route west from Trumbull, Connecticut, to Katonah, New York, as the Altice USA-owned company aims for revenue growth.
The company's upcoming route will include a link that branches south, connecting Norwalk, Connecticut into New York State along the way. a representative for Lightpath said construction on the project is expected to continue through mid-2023, but the network will be made available to customers gradually as work progresses.
Asked why this particular region was chosen for the expansion, the representative said customers were the catalyst for the build-out, but that part of Connecticut is "full of businesses, educators and government organizations that it can target.
"We will continue to build where we see the needs and opportunities for our customers. The last 18 months under the new management team have been a very productive period for the company and we are just getting started," the representative added.
Lightpath is jointly owned by Altice USA and Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners, with existing operations in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts. Expanding its footprint in Connecticut is part of a broader expansion effort that the company has undertaken over the past year.
In April, it opened a new 300-mile route between New York City and Ashburn, Virginia, to complement an existing route between the two cities. The latter is a well-known major data center hub with locations owned by Digital Realty, Amazon Web Services, QTS, Equinix, Rackspace, DataBank and NTT, among others.
As of May, Lightpath said it had reached 20,000 miles of fiber lines and added thousands of service points, bringing the total to 13,500.
Altice did not provide breakthrough figures for Lightpath's revenue in the second quarter. However, Altice CEO Dexter Goei said during the carrier's earnings call that Lightpath's revenue was flat year-over-year, despite a 63 percent increase in net sales bookings for the quarter. According to Goei, bookings benefited from Lightpath's expansion efforts and new market launches.
The CEO said order entries take time to execute and translate into revenue, which means "if we're going to install these types of numbers in the next six to 12 months, you should expect to be in the Lightpath product."
