Crosstown Fiber has announced a major milestone in the expansion of its high-capacity fiber infrastructure, launching a 45-mile route connecting Aurora to downtown Chicago. This new corridor addresses one of the region’s most pressing connectivity challenges, the lack of diverse network routes between the city and its western suburbs, and represents a significant step toward improving reliability and performance for enterprises across the area.

The route extends from 350 Cermak in Chicago to 2905 Diehl Road in Aurora, providing a fully independent underground fiber path. Historically, organizations operating in this corridor have been forced to rely on a small number of network routes, creating potential single points of failure. Crosstown Fiber’s new western route directly addresses that vulnerability, offering an alternative path engineered for resiliency and uptime.

“Our Aurora route is a strategic response to mounting customer demand for genuine redundancy,” said Eric Nickla, Chief Revenue Officer of Crosstown Fiber. “We’re seeing enterprises increasingly require multiple physically diverse paths, not just multiple providers using the same infrastructure. This route delivers that independence and positions Chicago businesses to compete more effectively in an AI-driven economy that demands zero-tolerance connectivity.”

The new build enhances performance for mission-critical applications such as financial trading, data center interconnection, and cloud services. It delivers low-latency connectivity and robust capacity to meet growing regional bandwidth requirements, essential for organizations managing real-time and data-intensive workloads.

By designing the route to operate entirely underground and fully independent from existing infrastructure, Crosstown Fiber has created a foundation for true network diversity. The project strengthens business continuity and ensures that companies in healthcare, finance, and technology can maintain operations even during large-scale disruptions.

“This route eliminates a critical gap that has constrained regional business growth,” said Michael Underdown, President and CEO of Crosstown Fiber. “We’re already seeing strong pre-commitment interest from healthcare systems, financial services, and technology companies that require carrier-grade reliability for their mission-critical applications. The timing aligns perfectly with increased enterprise spending on network resilience infrastructure.”

As digital transformation accelerates, network reliability has become inseparable from business competitiveness. Crosstown Fiber’s western expansion not only boosts the resiliency of Chicago’s communications backbone but also reinforces the region’s position as a growing hub for innovation, finance, and AI-driven technologies.

Crosstown Fiber is now accepting new customer connections along the Aurora route, reinforcing its commitment to building a stronger, more resilient network across the greater Chicagoland area.