Zayo completed its new Umatilla–Prineville–Reno (UPR) long-haul fiber route, a 622-mile inland corridor designed to serve as a new backbone in the Western U.S.

The route provides an alternative to the heavily traveled I-5 corridor, and is built to help facilitate AI and cloud traffic patterns, connecting data center clusters in Oregon and Nevada through a direct inland path between Umatilla, Prineville, and Reno.

Zayo said the new build brings connectivity to major AI centers and several unserved and underserved communities across Oregon, California, and Nevada.

“While others plan, we’re building the infrastructure that makes AI possible,” Bill Long, Zayo’s chief product and strategy officer, explained. “Without connectivity, data centers and AI factories are just expensive refrigerators: cold boxes of compute with no way for data to get in or out.”

Long said that the company’s strategy is focused on bringing capacity, reach, and diversity to the places where large workloads are being deployed at scale.

The UPR system uses SMF-28 fiber, multiple conduits, and 13 Zayo-owned in-line amplifiers (ILAs). With completion of the corridor, Zayo integrated the route into its broader West Coast long-haul and subsea systems.

Funding for the UPR project was supported in part by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) Middle Mile Grant Program, part of federal efforts to improve high-capacity infrastructure and bridge regional connectivity gaps.

Zayo framed the new route as a cornerstone of a larger expansion strategy. The company earlier this year committed to building 5,000 new long-haul miles by 2030 in an attempt to stay ahead of bandwidth constraints driven by AI, cloud, and edge computing adoption. At the time, Zayo CEO Steve Smith emphasized the urgency of these developments, noting that the demand for long-haul routes surpassed $1 billion in AI-driven deals in 2024.

“As the complexity of long-haul builds continues to be prohibitive to many providers, Zayo remains the only company building long-haul routes at scale to lead this next phase of infrastructure growth,” Smith said in January.

Zayo currently operates more than 19.5 million fiber miles and connects 1,700 on-net data centers.