Zayo Group Holdings, Inc. and Equinix, Inc. announced the successful completion of a 400 Gbps (400G) trial, connecting data centers in London (Slough) and Paris on Zayo's subsea fiber network. The trial – undertaken in First Quarter 2022 – marks the latest joint innovation between the companies as they prepare for the growing need to move continually-increasing volumes of data faster than ever before. As part of the trial, Zayo deployed a 500G optical channel on its 800G-enabled, DWDM network.

The company used the additional bandwidth to deploy an extra 100G wave for enhanced monitoring capabilities, creating increased visibility to ensure the consistent viability of the network. The connection was able to withstand full-load testing without any traffic loss. The new 400G technology produced many benefits by reducing hardware from four separate 100G optical cards to just one 400G card.

This resulted in a simple application with fewer handoffs between the customer and Zayo, reducing the potential points of failure. Equinix streamlined operations by having fewer circuits to manage and operate its network while reducing costs. These achievements mark key differentiators for customers who build their networks around high bandwidth capacity.