Dark fiber is optical fiber, dedicated to a single customer and where the customer is responsible for attaching the telecommunications equipment and lasers to "light" the fiber. Traditionally optical fiber networks have been built by carriers where they take on the responsibility of lighting the fiber and provide a managed service to the customer. With customer owned dark fiber networks the end customer owns and controls the actual fiber and decides to which service provider to whom they wish to connect for services such as telephony, cable TV and Internet. However, most customer owned dark fiber deployments are used for delivery of Internet service. Professional 3rd parties companies who specialize in dark fiber systems take care of the actual installation of the fiber and also maintain it on behalf of the customer. Technically these companies actually own the fiber, but sell IRUs (Indefeasible Rights of Use) for up to 20 years for unrestricted use of the fiber. There is no additional management complexity or overhead associated with customer owned dark fiber. In fact in many cases customer owned dark fiber may be more reliable than traditional telecommunication services and easier to manage because it vastly simplifies the network architecture and allows the consolidation of network services to a central hub.
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