Fibre operator Everstream has increased its total route miles by 80% in 2021, to nearly 27,000 miles of fibre adding more than 10 million feet of new fibre for the second consecutive year.

This represents the company’s largest annual network increase to date and includes year-over-year growth through greenfield fibre builds, the business said.

Everstream has invested $600 million into growing its high-capacity, low-latency fibre network since 2019.

This year, Everstream constructed nearly 2,000 route miles of fibre in new and existing markets and supplemented that growth with assets from the acquisition of Uniti which extended the company’s footprint into Pennsylvania, Southern New Jersey and Northern Delaware.

The business also has more than 3,000 route miles of fibre under construction, which are expected to be completed by the end of 2022.

Chief executive Brett Lindsey, said: “Everstream continues to prioritize investing in our network infrastructure by building new fibre and densifying existing assets to ensure the network exceeds our internal standards for uptime, reliability and delivering an ideal customer experience.”

In its 2021 Report Card For America’s Infrastructure, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave infrastructure in the US a grade of C- amid a $2.59 trillion shortfall in infrastructure spending.

While the Infrastructure Bill has passed with funding allocated for middle-mile connections, the funding is a small fraction of the total digital infrastructure package.

Lindsey added: “Everstream first began an aggressive investment in our network three years ago and is committed to continuing to do so.

“From the ever-increasing connectivity requirements of enterprise businesses to the impending demand for 5G services, high-capacity fibre networks are required to support this growth and Everstream’s new fibre network infrastructure is primed to serve enterprise customers, support 5G initiatives and more.”