Dark fiber provider Bandwidth IG appointed a former Zayo executive Bruce Garrison to lead its next phase of growth, as it looks to build up both its network and profile. Garrison will step into a role vacated by telecom veteran James Nolte when he retired in October.
Founded in 2019, Bandwidth IG currently has 280 route miles of underground fiber across San Francisco, Portland and Atlanta. Over the next year, it is looking to add 100 more route miles to that tally, with Garrison leading the charge.
Garrison comes to Bandwidth from a position as CEO of Kansas Fiber Network, a regional provider of 100G Ethernet transport with infrastructure running across not only Kansas but also western Missouri, southern Nebraska, northern Oklahoma and eastern Colorado. Before assuming that role in June 2021, Garrison was chief revenue officer at fellow midwestern fiber provider Bluebird Network, which has assets spanning Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, Oklahoma and Tennessee.
But notably, Garrison also spent five years at Zayo Group. After joining the company as VP of Global Reach in 2015, he was promoted to SVP of Global Partners in 2018 and soon thereafter became SVP of Zayo’s colocation subsidiary zColo. He left the company in 2020. Earlier roles included stints at GTS Central Europe (which was acquired by Deutsche Telekom in 2014) and EarthLink Business.
“As we enter into our next phase of growth and look to expand our footprint further, Garrison's expertise in the dark fiber industry will take our services to the next level," Bill Cook, Bandwidth’s Board Chairman, said in a statement.
Bandwidth IG previously identified Zayo, Windstream and Astound Broadband as key competitors in the markets where it operates. Interestingly, Garrison is the second former Zayo exec to lead the company: Nolte spent six years as SVP of sales at Zayo before being lured out of retirement to serve as Bandwidth’s CEO.