AT&T Business introduced its Express Waves service, which is a high-capacity fiber service designed to accelerate deployment of data-intensive enterprise workloads across its nationwide wavelength network.

Express Waves offers 100 Gb/s (100G) and 400 Gb/s (400G) per wavelength connectivity options to support workloads from AI inference to real-time analytics. The new service can be deployed within 24 hours for long-haul links between U.S. metros, although activation times are subject to site readiness, verification, and availability.

The fiber service runs on dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) technology, which has been able to transport up to 1.6 Tb/s (1.6T) on a single wavelength in lab trials. That scalability positions AT&T’s backbone for the growing traffic generated by AI agents and distributed edge applications.

Customers can combine four 400G wavelength circuits using the new 1.6T coherent technology, though supporting equipment is sold separately and 400G services are available only in select markets.

The launch extends AT&T’s Wavelength Edgeless architecture, which now spans 460,000 properties and connects 2.3 million business locations with up to 400G metro handoffs. This approach pushes connectivity closer to end users, lowering latency for enterprise sites and distributed data centers.

"AT&T Express Waves is about giving customers exactly what they want – capacity, certainty, and speed – right when their business needs it,” Julie Kutchinski, VP of wireline products at AT&T Business, noted in a statement.

As enterprises deploy more AI and hybrid-cloud workloads, carriers like AT&T are racing to build fiber backbones capable of supporting distributed, high-throughput connections between data centers and local edge sites.

The Express Waves release underscores AT&T’s effort to strengthen its position in enterprise connectivity amid surging AI infrastructure demand. Competitors including Lumen Technologies and Verizon Business have also recognized fiber as key to serving increasingly data-intensive workloads as AI applications proliferate.