AT&T Business has launched Express Waves, a new high-capacity optical service delivering up to 400G per wavelength between key metro locations across its long-haul Wavelength network. The service enables rapid activation—within 24 hours on select routes—and aims to meet the rising bandwidth and low-latency requirements of AI, cloud, and edge workloads.
The new platform extends AT&T’s Wavelength Edgeless architecture to more than 460,000 properties and 2.3 million business locations, allowing customers to deploy 400G metro handoffs within 15 days where eligible. Using Dense Wavelength-Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology, Express Waves supports dedicated, private fiber connections for mission-critical data, analytics, and AI inferencing workloads. In internal trials, AT&T transmitted 1.6 Tbps over a single wavelength—four times faster than its current top rate—highlighting future scalability for next-generation enterprise and hyperscale use cases.
Express Waves offers configurable options for 100G or 400G per wavelength, with built-in diversity and redundancy for uninterrupted service. The network avoids public internet routes, delivering private, secure connectivity optimized for latency-sensitive applications such as real-time analytics, hybrid cloud, and AI edge processing.
• Service activation in as little as 24 hours between major U.S. metros
• Bandwidth tiers of 100G and 400G per wavelength
• Metro reach extended to 460K properties and 2.3M businesses
• DWDM-enabled architecture capable of 1.6 Tbps per wavelength in trials
• Private, redundant fiber infrastructure for low latency and high reliability
“AT&T Express Waves is about giving customers exactly what they want—capacity, certainty, and speed—right when their business needs it,” said Julie Kutchinski, vice president of wireline products at AT&T Business.
🌐 Analysis: AT&T’s Express Waves signals a continued push to modernize its wavelength and fiber infrastructure for AI-era workloads, following its April 2024 Wavelength Edgeless rollout. The company joins peers such as Verizon and Lumen in emphasizing private optical connectivity for enterprise-grade AI and edge applications. The addition of 400G metro handoffs positions AT&T competitively for distributed data processing environments that demand both ultra-low latency and rapid provisioning.
