FiberLight, a fiber infrastructure provider with more than 20 years of experience designing, building, and operating mission-critical, high-bandwidth networks, announced a $20 million investment for a 100-mile fiber optic infrastructure project along State Highway (SH) 130, near Austin, Texas.
The investment, which occurs in collaboration with the Autonomy Institute, will create the region’s first intelligent infrastructure economic zone.
Delivering much-needed bandwidth to the fast-growing areas adjacent to SH 130 will transform it into a fully autonomous corridor. As part of the project, FiberLight is providing high-speed 10 and 100GB connectivity to the Public Infrastructure Network Nodes (PINNs) across approximately 92 miles of SH 130 to support the development, installation, and software needed to manage autonomous systems.
As a 501c3 nonprofit organization, the Autonomy Institute comprises a public-private partnership with members including organizations like Hewlett Packard Enterprise, NVIDIA, Supermicro, Raytheon, Cisco, Terrascale, Syndeo Cities, Arnouse Digital Devices, Compass Datacenters, Ericsson, Resilient, Truweather Solutions, and Above Robotics. This collective expertise in software, hardware, and advanced systems and infrastructure contributes to a shared mission to accelerate a “path to commerce and productivity” for intelligent and autonomous systems.
The SH 130 project advances the concept of connected smart cities, which is also being pursued by notable projects in Michigan, Colorado, North Carolina, New York City, and Italy. When complete, the FiberLight network will support autonomous mobility districts, public safety, and response, as well as distributed work centers. The advanced spatial computing capabilities from the endeavor will support autonomous cars, trucks, and drones as well as advanced AR/VR and other edge computing applications.
Bill Major, CEO of FiberLight
FiberLight is very excited to be a member of the Autonomy Institute and involved in the deployment of this autonomous systems project. To realize the goal for safe and reliable use of automated vehicles, fiber optic placement – delivered by PINNS – is critical. For this project, our fiber infrastructure will deliver 10 and 100GB connectivity of capacity or more to each of the more than 240 PINNs, situated every 2,000 feet, across State Highway 130, and provide a resilient solution that will drive economic expansion and job growth for the region.
Jeffrey DeCoux, Chairman and Autonomy Fellow at the Autonomy Institute
SH130 is the modern-day equivalent of Route 66, supporting dozens of communities, and enabling 21st-century solutions. Intelligent Infrastructure touches the day-to-day life of each of our citizens and is crucial to competitiveness and prosperity. FiberLight has helped deploy critical digital infrastructure statewide, and their expertise will build a stronger and more connected Texas.
