Zayo expands connectivity with fastest direct network from Manchester to New York City

Zayo Group Holdings has announced the fastest direct network route connecting the cities of Manchester and New York City, with a transatlantic route.

The route – adding to a network spanning over 16 million fibre miles and 139,000 route miles – is designed to provide a direct subsea cable route to North America that avoids backhauling to global internet hubs in London and Paris, reducing transatlantic latency and enabling a better user experience.

The investment will mark an additional transatlantic cable for Zayo, connecting its packet IP network between North America and Continental Europe. Offering immediate access to New York, the new subsea cable route is said to provide customers with added diversity and resiliency. As a result, customers in the north of England and across Europe will receive faster and more efficient connections to North America.

With Europe being home to five of the 10 largest global internet hubs, the route should support the growing needs of the European communications infrastructure landscape, enabling the Northern Powerhouse vision of the UK government, centred around Manchester, for a super-charged, globally connected north of England economy and a faster, Northern-based direct gateway for the independent internet exchanges in the north of England and Scotland.

Zayo said it can also offer a direct gateway for Manchester to attract both large enterprises and innovative new startups as Manchester is the UK’s second technology city, after London. It added that it is providing resilience to the UK’s internet backbone, no longer reliant on London as many other IP networks are.

By upgrading the Manchester internet gateway and leveraging capacity from its Zeus subsea cable, Zayo has added a direct route to Amsterdam. This gives customers three internet routes: from Manchester to the US, Dublin and the Netherlands. These complement the three routes it also has to London.

Zayo also said it has lowered latency for customers in the Netherlands as the Manchester transatlantic route acts as an alternative path for all packet traffic in Amsterdam, by avoiding the heavy traffic centres of London and Paris. Amsterdam is the third-largest internet hub.

The deployments add to Zayo’s existing significant investments in its European fibre platform. In January 2023, it announced the deployment of a 400G-enabled fibre route connecting Paris and Marseille.

With six new subsea cables in Marseille scheduled for completion – including key gateways to Asia, Africa and the Middle East – capacity demands in Marseilles are expected to quadruple by 2026. This, according to Zayo, is creating a rapidly increasing need for enterprises to transport traffic growth from these hubs throughout Europe and to other key commerce centres across the globe.

“Cultivating an enhanced performance for our customers is at the forefront of Zayo's mission,” said Zayo Europe chief operating officer Yannick Leboyer.

“The new subsea route is Zayo’s latest step towards providing fast, reliable infrastructure to connect global internet hubs both within Europe and to the US. With the fastest transatlantic connection from Manchester, Zayo is well-positioned to handle the increasing capacity demands between these hubs, fuelling business innovation and digital transformation for our customers.”