Better fiber infrastructure to ignite your digital transformation: FiberLight

FiberLight designs, builds and deploys mission-critical high bandwidth networks to ignite its client’s digital transformation. With 17,000 route miles of fiber networks and 78,000 pre-qualified near-net buildings, FiberLight operates in over 30 metropolitan areas in the U.S. FiberLight’s service portfolio includes high-capacity Ethernet and Wave Transport Services, Cloud Connect, Dedicated Internet Access, Dark Fiber and Wireless Backhaul serving domestic and international telecom companies, wireless, wireline, cable and cloud providers as well as key players across enterprise, government, and education.

 FiberLight, LLC, a fiber infrastructure provider with more than 20 years of experience building and operating mission-critical, high-bandwidth networks, recently closed out the most significant quarter of its history – including the announcement that it signed an agreement to be acquired by Morrison & Co, the renewal of a 20-year contract with the Hurst-Euless-Bedford Independent School District, and a renewed commitment to accelerate network infrastructure expansion in fast-growing U.S. markets. 

Recent highlights from the organization include:

• FiberLight signing a definitive agreement to be acquired by H.R.L. Morrison & Co, a premier global infrastructure investment firm focused on the digital and renewables sectors. Morrison & Co’s investment in FiberLight marks its first investment in the North American digital infrastructure market, and will accelerate FiberLight’s network expansion, positioning it to take advantage of the rapidly growing fiber infrastructure market.

• FiberLight renewing a 20-year contract with the Hurst-Euless-Bedford Independent School District to continue its partnership and enable next generation learning. FiberLight began working with HEB ISD nearly 25 years ago when the school district needed a fiber provider to service K-12 students across a 40-acre region in northern Texas. When the original agreement expired, HEB ISD signed a new deal with FiberLight citing their consistent up-time, scalability and superior service in meeting the demands of a forward-looking school community.

• FiberLight expanding and enhancing its critical network infrastructure across Texas, Central Florida, Virginia, Maryland and the greater Atlanta area. Spanning approximately 17,000 route miles of fiber infrastructure, and servicing customers in over 30 metropolitan areas, FiberLight continues to invest in building out state-of-the-art, high capacity networks that provide unprecedented scalability and reliability for its customers and their end-users.

“We are proud of FiberLight’s significant achievements over the past few months and are bullish about our future as fiber broadband continues to expand into new markets,” said Chris Rabii, CEO of FiberLight. “With the recent investment in FiberLight by Morrison and Co., renewed partnerships with longstanding alliances like HED-ISD, and our unmatched network assets, we are looking forward to leading the industry in meeting the business needs of cloud service providers, network operators, government agencies, and large-scale enterprises with unmatched technology and service.” 

Scalability, reliability, and superior customer service

FiberLight began working with HEB ISD nearly 25 years ago when the school district needed a fiber provider to service Kindergarten through high school students across a 40-acre region in northern Texas. Over the years, FiberLight worked with HEB ISD to scale to meet the growing needs of its school community as it expanded across new campuses and introduced next-generation technology – including a major upgrade that enabled the district to deliver Cloud-based learning across 30 campuses. When the original agreement expired and the contract went to RFP, HEB ISD signed a new 20-year contract with FiberLight citing their consistent up-time, scalability and superior service in meeting the demands of a forward-looking school community.

“FiberLight and the district have been partners for well over 20 years,” said Scott Forester, Director of Technology at Hurst-Euless-Bedford Independent School District. “When we went out to RFP, one thing we looked at was the benefit of uptime. A large proportion of our infrastructure is cloud-based and hosted in the cloud and without a solid foundation that our cable plant provides, we would be sunk. FiberLight’s 99.9% uptime is invaluable. All our scaling up has been seamless, and the backbone layer that supports our growth has been smooth and consistent. FiberLight has been excellent in getting that done.”

HEB ISD utilizes a Metro model that relies on FiberLight’s 10-gig backbone to connect to the district’s internet provider and delivers ethernet point-to-point access to its 30 campuses. HEB ISD also relies on FiberLight’s 20-gig connection between its two data centers that mirror one another for redundancy and provide critical backup for the district. “Hurst-Euless-Bedford Independent School District is one of FiberLight’s largest networks supporting K-12 education in the state of Texas,” said Mike Ellison. Vice President of Public Sector for FiberLight. “We’re proud to work with them to enable a hub and spoke model that delivers internet to their school community, and enables next-generation learning for more than 23,000 students.”

Meet the leader behind the success of FiberLight

FiberLight welcomed Christopher Rabii as Chief Executive Officer in November 2020, taking the place of Jim Lynch, who was announced as the company’s interim CEO in July 2020 and will remain the Executive Chairman of FiberLight. Prior to Rabii’s appointment as CEO of FiberLight, he was the SVP of Technology, Fulfillment and Operations for Altice Business, a division of Altice USA, where he was responsible for all activities related to service delivery, engineering and operations in support of Altice’s enterprise and carrier customers. Prior to his role at Altice, Rabii served as the SVP of Operations and Chief Technology Officer at Cablevision Lightpath, which was acquired by Altice in 2016. In this role, Rabii was instrumental in achieving challenging operational upgrades, leading a team to ultimately provide improvements that were noteworthy for their successful partnership with sales, speed of implementation and subsequent customer service enhancements. The resulting financial performance exceeded industry expectations.

Chris and his teams have consistently outperformed in key technical and operational areas, including network design, fiber construction, engineering, field operations, provisioning, maintenance and network monitoring. Earlier in his career, Rabii held a number of executive management positions at AboveNet, an early leader in providing mission-critical metro fiber connectivity to enterprise customers across Tier 1 markets in the U.S.

“With our customers and partners, we design, build, and deploy mission-critical networks and responsive customer experiences.”