en.Wedoany.com Reported - Nokia and t3 Broadband have delivered an ultra-high-capacity optical transport network for Aureon, a broadband network operator in the US Midwest, connecting the primary data center development zone in Ellendale, North Dakota, with the Chicago metropolitan area.
The network has an initial capacity of 100Tb/s, scalable to 400Tb/s, making it Aureon's highest-capacity network connection to date, enabling it to offer transmission service scales typically only available to hyperscale operators. The deployment utilizes the Nokia 1830 Global Express (GX) platform, Super C and L-band optical line systems, and 1.2T ICE7 coherent optical modules, designed to support the rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, and hyperscale data center workloads. Aureon CEO George O'Neal stated that this deployment provides the capacity and flexibility needed to support large-scale data center interconnection requirements and lays the foundation for future expansion. Nokia Vice President of Sales Matt Young noted that AI is accelerating the demand for scalable, high-performance connectivity between data centers, and this collaboration provides the fiber infrastructure needed to support this growth. t3 Broadband CEO Chris Crowe said that its goal is to build future-proof networks for customers in partnership with collaborators, and this deployment enhances Aureon's ability to serve large-scale data center and AI connectivity needs.
According to a report from Synergy Research Group, the development focus of US hyperscale data centers is shifting to the country's heartland, with Texas and Midwestern states accounting for the largest share of future capacity. The firm stated that by the end of 2025, these regions already held one-third of the operational hyperscale data center capacity in the US, and this proportion is expected to reach 53% among capacity planned to come online in the coming years. In the Midwest, the importance of Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, and Missouri is rapidly increasing, attracting major projects from companies such as Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI. In April 2026, Bloomberg reported that Facebook plans to invest $837 million to build a multi-year data center project in Wisconsin.
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