Zayo Reaches Fiber Reserve Deal with Corning
The company secured ‘a significant portion’ of the fiber it will need this decade
WASHINGTON, Aug. 20, 2026 – Zayo has reached a deal with Corning to secure “a significant portion” of the fiber Zayo projects it will need through the rest of the decade.
The companies declined to disclose the financial terms of the deal, which they announced Thursday.
Zayo is planning to deploy 15,000 new route miles of fiber by 2030, including 8,000 miles as part of a deal with Nvidia. The company provides fiber connectivity to enterprises, increasingly AI companies and data centers.
“AI infrastructure is putting unprecedented pressure on one of the physical inputs required to scale it: fiber,” the companies said in a release. “Securing fiber optic cable supply now gives Zayo greater flexibility to scale as demand evolves.”
ISPs large and small have also noticed AI companies’ insatiable demand for fiber driving up costs and putting pressure on supply. Rural providers that won funding under the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program are still finding gear more expensive than expected, and AT&T and Lumen executives said this week they were seeing “skyrocketing” supply chain costs.
Corning and other U.S. fiber manufacturers have assured the Commerce Department that they’ll have enough supply to meet BEAD demand despite the AI frenzy.
Bob Whitman, Corning’s vice president of market development, said at Mountain Connect last week the company was staggering fiber shipments to BEAD winners to align with deployment timelines rather than fulfilling bulk orders. That’s an effort to make sure BEAD builds can happen on time while keeping up with demand from hyperscalers.
A Corning spokesperson said the Zayo deal would not affect fiber availability for BEAD winners.
“We understand where demand is moving, and we’re putting the physical inputs in place now to build ahead of it,” Zayo CEO Steve Smith said in a statement. “Deepening our relationship with Corning gives us greater confidence that material availability won’t stand between customer demand and the infrastructure required to deliver it.”
Zayo says its North American fiber network spans 224,000 route miles. That includes the 90,000 route miles the company acquired from Crown Castle for $8.5 billion earlier this year.
Smith will step down as CEO on Sept. 1, when Sowmyanarayan Sampath will take his place. He has led the company for nearly six years.
Sampath previously spent more than 11 years at Verizon, where he most recently led the wireless carrier's consumer group.
