Dark fiber is existing underground fiber-optic cables that are not currently transmitting data. While "lit" fiber actively sends data via light pulses, dark fiber is waiting to be used. It originated approximately four decades ago when more fiber infrastructure was installed than was necessary to accommodate future growth and demand. Today, businesses can buy or lease existing dark fiber, or have new dark fiber installed specifically for them.

• Predictable Costs: Lease costs remain constant, even when you upgrade bandwidth and equipment. Our competitive dark fiber lease agreements are fixed, eliminating cost fluctuation.
• Flexible and Scalable: Shentel Business’s dark fiber solution enables you to quickly and easily scale up and out, providing virtually unlimited room for growth.
• Private, Secure, and Customized: We maintain the physical fiber, and you have complete control over everything else. Our standalone private network provides enhanced security, ensuring you are the only one who can access your data. Shentel Business can also customize a dark fiber solution that fits your specific needs.
• Reliable Network: Built with ringed technology, our resilient network is redundant, giving you failover protection for peak dependability.
• Enhanced Disaster Recovery: Dark fiber is safeguarded against common third-party-related outages. You can identify and correct any issues that arise without waiting for ISPs. Our local NOC can dispatch repair crews quickly to restore fiber in the rare event of a fiber issue. Anddark fiber maintains redundancy when using two different disaster recovery providers with overlapping infrastructures.
• Partner with the best: Our dark fiber solutions deliver high capacity, high-performance throughput for bandwidth-intensive applications like 4K video. It ensures the fastest, most direct and efficient end-to-end path for your data. Our team has a 125-year history of providing quality customer care.