Zayo & Microsoft Team Up to Bring Broadband Services to Rural Communities

Simplified Communications is glad to see Zayo and Microsoft teaming up to bring broadband services to rural communities.
 
Zayo provides communications infrastructure services, including fiber and bandwidth connectivity, colocation and cloud infrastructure.
 
Microsoft is an American multinational technology company that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services.
 
Zacks Equity Research reports:
“In a concerted effort to deploy rural broadband solutions across the United States, Zayo Group Holdings, Inc. ZAYO recently teamed up with Microsoft Corporation MSFT. Per the deal, Zayo will foster economic development and deliver seamless low-latency core fiber connectivity with a dedicated network infrastructure to some unprivileged communities, backed by Microsoft’s affordable broadband access initiative.

Dubbed Microsoft Airband Initiative, the venture was initiated in 2017 to eradicate the rural broadband gap across the United States, and was expanded worldwide last year. It has been successful in combining private sector capital investments with targeted support from public sector organizations to provide basic employment, education and healthcare amenities to needy communities, with the help of excellent network connectivity.

Given Zayo’s significant presence across Tier 1, 2, 3 and 4 U.S. cities, Airband works with multiple Internet access providers, equipment makers and local entrepreneurs to provide high-speed connection with the help of TV white space spectrum technology. This spectrum band has excellent broadcasting characteristics and large parts of it are unused in rural areas. Currently comprising 10 service provider partners, the Microsoft-backed undertaking aims to augment network connectivity to at least 3 million people in rural America by July 2022. Financial terms of the deal have not yet been disclosed.”