Windstream Wholesale Unveils Managed Spectrum Offering

Windstream Wholesale, a provider of fast and flexible solutions, is among the first in the industry to offer nationwide availability of Managed Spectrum, a new network architecture solution that empowers customers to deliver high capacity with increased flexibility, reduced costs and faster deployment times.

Leveraging Windstream Wholesale’s nationwide Intelligent Converged Optical Network (ICON), the company’s Managed Spectrum solution provides customers with a dedicated block of photonic capacity measured in GHz. Customers then procure, install, maintain and monitor the service layer equipment, giving them a secure, private connection between two locations within a metropolitan area or across the U.S.

Managed Spectrum provides customers the scalability of a conventional dark fiber offering without the operational overhead that comes with building, managing and maintaining a network.

“Exponential end-user traffic growth is requiring carriers to operate with greater agility, automation, cost-optimization and network flexibility,” said Joe Scattareggia, chief revenue officer for Windstream Wholesale. “The continuing evolution of Windstream Wholesale’s ICON network meets this need by enabling integration of new technologies. ICON’s innovative architecture makes it possible for us to simultaneously support emerging Spectrum services along with our traditional lit solutions, and that’s a huge advance for the high-bandwidth marketplace.”

In March 2021, Windstream Wholesale and Colt Technology Services, a leading provider of high bandwidth and on-demand connectivity, announced a successful trial of Managed Spectrum services.

Colt leveraged the Windstream Flex grid open line system between Chicago and Ashburn, Va., using their own coherent transmission system in that trial. Colt leveraged the Windstream-provided Managed Spectrum to deliver multiple 100GE and 400GE services, traversing nearly 1,800 kilometers between the business hubs.

Colt has recently purchased three routes from Windstream Wholesale – Chicago to New York; Secaucus, New Jersey, to Ashburn, and Ashburn to Chicago.

“Since the success of our trial with Windstream Wholesale in March 2021, Colt has continued to invest in its high bandwidth, agile, on-demand network – the Colt IQ Network – in the U.S. and pursue innovation and investment in our partnerships. We are excited to build on our collaboration with Windstream with this next step and leverage Windstream’s spectrum services to scale up our backbone capacity and capability in the region,” said Vivek Gaur, Colt’s vice president of Network Engineering.

Windstream’s ICON provides open and disaggregated networking infrastructure, enabling wholesale and enterprise technology customers to select unique custom routes, maintain operational insights with Windstream’s Network Intelligence functions, and place their networks closer to the edge to better serve end-users.