An Interesting Iberian Peninsula Wholesale Player: Lyntia

Most West African coast cables land in Portugal. The buyer's challenge is that are few connectivity providers available to carry that traffic to the rest of Europe. Arelion and Zayo are both off-net. My guess is Arelion will light layer 1 services near the end of 2025. What providers are available do not offer a lot of physical diversity as most are using fibre on the high tension power lines. 

I came across Lyntia roughly a year ago via an EUNetworks introduction. This wholesale network is the subsidiary of Naturgy, a multinational electricity and gas company. The company is a power and gas provider owning a very dense distribution network in Spain and Portugal. 

Lyntia's fibre is in the gas pipeline right of way with a little bit on high tension power lines. The network enjoys unique physical diversity as its Layer 1 competitors have bought IRU's on a rival power line company. Unlike some of its competitors, Lyntia enjoys rock solid financial stability as a subsidiary of a regulated utility. Its pricing is competitive, but latency lower than many alternatives. The latency range for LS1 to the Madrid Interxion buildings ranges from 7 ms RTD for Colt's low latency service (premium pricing) to 12 ms. Lyntia is on the low side of the spectrum with an RTD under 10 ms.

Because the natural gas and power company delivers to end users, Lyntia has 87,000 on-net buildings in Spain alone as well as fibre linking the key Portuguese data centers and cable landing stations. It offers a chance for independent ISPs to provide fibre access to their prospective business, government, and residential customers. The best ISP diet is high in Last Mile fibre. 😉 

I urge capacity buyers to open their eyes and network portfolios to these regional providers. They include not only the subsidiaries of utility companies, but also a huge number of independent fibre optic networks in places like Netherland and France. Their advantages often include faster provisioning, greater commercial flexibility, fibre-to-the-building access, and unique physical diversity.

Map of the Fibre Optic Wholesale Lyntia Network


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