Wilcon

Wilcon
Formerly called
 Wilshire Connection
Private company
Industry Telecommunications
Founded 1998 in Los Angeles
Headquarters 624 South Grand Avenue, One Wilshire Building, Los Angeles, California, United States
Area served
 California
Key people
 Jon DeLuca (CEO)
Executive team [1]
Services Fiber optic networks, data centers, colocation, telecom infrastructure, dark fiber, ethernet, IP, wavelength-division multiplexing
Owners Wilcon Holdings[2]
Website Wilcon.com

Wilcon Holdings LLC, also simply called Wilcon, is an American fiber-optic communications and telecommunications infrastructure company headquartered in Los Angeles, California.[3] The company maintains a 3,000 route mile fiber optic network that connects Los Angeles to southern California cities such as San Diego, and provides services to enterprise customers such as universities, wireless carriers, and companies in media, healthcare, and financial services.[4]

Founded in 1998 as Wilshire Connection and renamed Wilcon in 2011, Wilcon acquired the One Wilshire-based company IX2 in 2012, which was followed by an acquisition of the dark fiber provider Freedom Dark Fiber Networks in 2013. The integration of the three companies into Wilcon was completed in 2014, and shortly afterwards the Hispanic Executive claimed that Wilcon was "the largest privately held fiber optic network provider in Southern California."[5] The company currently offers dark fiber,[6] ethernet,[7] colocation, direct internet access,[7] and managed private optical connections.[6]

Overview

Wilcon is a privately owned network services company focused on telecommunications, infrastructure and colocation services. The company focuses on non-wireless methods of communication involving dark fiber, ethernet, IP, and wavelength-division multiplexing,[8] and as of 2015 had approximately 3,000 route miles of physical fiber optic network[4][4] connecting southern California cities such as San Diego, Los Angeles, Burbank, Pasadena, Santa Monica, Woodland Hills, Thousand Oaks, Santa Clarita, Long Beach, Irvine, Riverside, and Carlsbad.[9] The company has a fiber network that encompasses approximately forty data centers and colocation facilities in California, and also operates 17 data centers and interconnection hubs that are "near-net" to the Wilcon network.[10] Their headquarters at One Wilshire house a number of data centers, with multiple floors of the building interconnected.[11]

Operators, such as Los Angeles-based Wilcon, are growing their fiber networks to keep up with growing demand from enterprise, media, government, education and healthcare industries. As an example, Wilcon enables companies to power their digital bandwidth requirements with their dark fiber network by providing access to high speed Internet carriers located in data centers throughout its Southern California network.
— Op-Ed by Elizabeth Brown for the Digital Journal (May 20, 2015)[12]

Among Wilcon's customers are production houses, healthcare providers, research institutions and wireless carriers, [13] with international carriers making up "a large part of Wilcon’s customers" as of May 2014.[14] The company maintains a staffed network operations center, and according to the publication TMC, as of 2014 Wilcon marketed "ethernet services ranging [up to 10gbps]; wavelength services (1 to 100gbps); IP transport (including SLAs and flexible billing options); and technical services (24/7 staffed network operations center)."[6]

History

Founding (1990s-2000s)

The predecessor company to Wilcon, Wilshire Connection, was founded in 1998 in Los Angeles, California.[7] The initial focus of Wilshire Connection was providing dark fiber services to all of the key telecommunications and data center buildings in downtown Los Angeles.[15][16] The company was acquired by Pamlico Capital in 2011 and renamed Wilcon,[6] with Jon DeLuca joining Wilcon as president and CEO that December.[1] In 2012, Wilcon acquired the local company IX2,[9][17] which at the time was an interconnection provider and data center business[9] based in the One Wilshire building.[6][14] Wilcon continued to focus on providing fiber optic and data center infrastructure into 2013,[9] and according to the Los Angeles Times, by that time the company also had a "strong foothold in central [and downtown] Los Angeles and a key connection to Asia via the One Wilshire building."[4] In October 2013[6] Wilcon acquired Freedom Dark Fiber Networks, a high-capacity dark fiber provider[9] that at the time operated 3,000 miles of dark fiber and 1,000 "on-net locations" in Southern California[6][4] in a fiber ring connected as far north from Los Angeles as San Diego.[9] Freedom Dark Fiber Networks was renamed Freedom Telecommunications,[9][18] and in November 2013 Wilcon began the process of integrating the three businesses.[6]

Expansion (2014)

In 2014, the firm Golub Capital agreed to additional funding to help Wilcon with the expansion of its network in Southern California.[2] Among other projects in 2014, that January Wilcon finished construction on a "high-capacity network for Los Angeles Center Studios,"[14] and other customers around that time included Amazon, Google, Netflix, Verizon Wireless, and the University of Southern California. [6] The company completed the integration of Freedom Telecommunications, IX2, and Wilshire Connection under the name Wilcon in March 2014.[6][17] By that time the three merged companies had 25,000 combined square feet of data center infrastructure in downtown Los Angeles.[17] Also in March Wilcon announced plans to offer "lit services" in addition to dark fiber over the next year.[6] In May 2014, Wilcon announced it was adding 25% more capacity to its One Wilshire colocation platform.[14] As a result, since its 2013 expansion, it has leased another approximately 5,000 square feet of space.[14]

As of May 2014, Wilcon's fiber network had connections to major hubs as far north as Santa Clarita, including those operated by CoreSite and Equinix.[14] In September 2014, Wilcon added a new network ring connecting Los Angeles and El Segundo, California. The ring added 43 route miles and 22,000 fiber miles to Wilcon's pre-existing network, and made it so Wilcon had "connections to all of the major data center locations in the Los Angeles metro area and over 50 data centers across Southern California," including Hollywood, Santa Monica and Burbank.[19] The publication Hispanic Executive claimed in October 2014 that Wilcon was "the largest privately held fiber optic network provider in Southern California."[5]

Lit services (2014-2015)

In the last quarter of 2014, Wilcon expanded from dark fiber into lit fiber optic fiber as well.[20] In December 2014 the company completed work integrating the "new tie points and building access entries into One Wilshire" that it had started with the acquisitions.[20] As of November 13, 2014, Wilcon had "44 data centers and co-location facilities on-net plus 17 data centers and interconnection hubs near-net."[13] That month Wilcon announced it would debut a new 100G fiber optic network by early 2015, which will connect Wilcon's approximately 1,000 locations with 3,000 miles of new fiber optic cable. Built in collaboration with the telecom equipment company Ciena and the network transport company LightRiver Technologies, the fiber network is intended to provide internet, ethernet, and wavelength services between Los Angeles and San Diego.[13]

"Part of our strategy [at Wilcon] is to stick to our knitting, knowing what we do well and where we have a competitive advantage, and just do that. So there's nothing cloud or voice related coming. We are a core infrastructure business. We offer DIA, but even that's not a primary driver for us. We view that as an add-on to an infrastructure sale."
— Wilcon CEO Jon DeLuca in January 2015[20]

By January 2015, the company remained "focused on Ethernet and waves and IP,"[20] with Wilcon's CEO Jon DeLuca stating that the company wasn't focusing on any new products beyond the recent optic addition, and would instead remain focused on infrastructure."[20] Also at that time, DeLuca stated that Wilcon still retained interest in expanding into regions such as Culver City and the San Fernando Valley.[20] In March 2015, Wilcon partnered with the cloud and infrastructure company Key Information Systems, Inc. on a new "fiber ring" that passes in circle through Agoura Hills, Simi Valley, Los Angeles, El Segundo, and back to Agoura Hills, and also connects to Wilcon's pre-existing 3,000-mile fiber network up to San Diego.[21] The ring was announced to be designed for "businesses with highly regulated or sensitive data requirements in Los Angeles and Ventura counties."[21] Wilcon remains headquartered in the One Wilshire building in Los Angeles, which according to Fortune is now "the most highly connected Internet point in the western U.S.,"[16] with underseas cables allowing "one-third of Internet traffic from the U.S. to Asia [to pass] through the building."[16]

Further reading

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "Executive Team". wilcon.com. Retrieved 2015-06-30.
  2. 1 2 Donde, Anastasia (September 2014). "Capital Talk: Golub Capital". Private Debt Investor (16): 28–33.
  3. ↑ "Wilshire Connection". Inc.com. 2011. Retrieved 2015-06-30.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Dave, Paresh (August 13, 2013). "Southland businesses get new option for high-speed Internet". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2015-06-30.
  5. 1 2 Kenney, Mary (October 2014). "The Visible Man". Hispanic Executive. Retrieved 2015-06-30.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Bernier, Paula (March 19, 2014). "Wilcon Announces Integration of Freedom, IX2, and Wilshire Connection". TMCnet.com. Retrieved 2015-06-30.
  7. 1 2 3 "Company Overview of Wilcon Operations LLC". Bloomberg. Retrieved 2015-06-30.
  8. ↑ "Services". wilcon.com. Retrieved 2015-06-30.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Wilcon Acquires Freedom Dark Fiber Networks". Pamlico Capital. August 13, 2013. Retrieved 2015-06-30.
  10. ↑ "Building List". wilcon.com. Retrieved 2015-06-30.
  11. ↑ "Data Centers at One Wilshire". wilcon.com. Retrieved 2015-07-15.
  12. ↑ Brown, Elizabeth (May 20, 2015). "Op-Ed: Fiber optics firms see gains from growth in data demand". Digital Journal. Retrieved 2015-06-30.
  13. 1 2 3 Kinney, Sean (November 13, 2014). "Fiber network from Wilcon to connect SoCal in early 2015". RCRWirelessNews. Retrieved 2015-06-30.
  14. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Jones, Penny (30 May 2014). "Wilcon: Taking a regional approach to colo in LA". Datacenter Dynamics. Retrieved 2015-06-30.
  15. ↑ Savageau, John (November 7, 2009). "Wiring Los Angeles with Eric Bender, President of Wilshire Connection". john-savageau.com. Retrieved 2015-06-30.
  16. 1 2 3 Vanian, Jonathan (June 8, 2015). "These are the buildings that make up the 'cloud'". Fortune. Retrieved 2015-06-30.
  17. 1 2 3 Yang, Justin (March 19, 2014). "Wilcon Rebrands Firms Acquired in Recent Roll-Up". Los Angeles Business Journal. Retrieved 2015-06-30.
  18. ↑ Buckley, Sean (August 13, 2013). "Wilcon expands Southern Calif. footprint with Freedom Dark Fiber Networks deal". FierceTelecom. Retrieved 2015-06-30.
  19. ↑ Buckley, Sean (September 19, 2014). "Wilcon deepens California fiber footprint with Los Angeles, El Segundo ring". FierceTelecom. Retrieved 2015-06-30.
  20. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Powell, Rob (January 12, 2015). "Industry Spotlight: Wilcon’s Jon DeLuca Talks California Fiber". Telecon Ramblings. Retrieved 2015-06-30.
  21. 1 2 Shamout, Omar (March 13, 2015). "L.A. Launch List: March 13". Los Angeles Business Journal. Retrieved 2015-06-30.

External links

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