Dark fiber in Riga: your own strand of glass

Dark fiber is a raw strand of glass with no active equipment on it. You light it with your own optics, so protocols, encryption and speeds are entirely your decision, and nothing on the path is shared or inspected. A lit service runs on our DWDM equipment instead: we operate the optics and hand you an Ethernet port at each end. Choose dark if your team runs its own network gear and wants full control, choose lit if you want a working channel without maintaining transceivers. Both options run over the same physical footprint, so the choice is about who manages the equipment rather than where the link can go.

Our own fiber footprint covers the Riga metro area, meaning the city itself and the surrounding districts where our routes run. Coverage is always confirmed per address, because the last section into a building matters as much as the main route. Send us the two endpoints, ideally with exact street addresses, and we check the path on our network and survey both buildings. Within a few days you get a clear answer on feasibility, followed by a quote with a monthly price and an SLA. One endpoint can also be our data centre in Riga if you want the link to land next to your equipment.

The strand itself does not limit you: a dark fiber pair carries whatever your optics at the two ends can push. When you need more capacity, you replace or add transceivers on your own equipment, and the contract with us stays exactly the same, because we rent you glass, not bandwidth. With DWDM a single pair carries many independent wavelengths at once, each running its own service. There is no per-megabit billing and no shaping on our side, since no equipment of ours sits in the path of a dark strand. Plan your optics budget around the distance between the endpoints, as longer routes need appropriate modules.

Cuts are rare but they happen, usually during construction work, so the contract is built around that risk. The SLA states binding repair times, and the splicing is done by our own field team rather than an outside contractor, which keeps the response predictable. The OTDR measurements and route documentation from delivery help locate the break quickly. Plan for the impact honestly: on a single route the link is down until the splice is finished, within the committed window. If the connection is critical, order a second, physically separate route from the start, so one dig never takes down both paths at once.

There is no fixed price list, because every link is priced from its route. The main factors are the length of the path and the buildings at each end, since entries and in-building sections take different amounts of work. What you receive is an offer with a fixed monthly price for the link, together with an SLA and repair time commitments, so the recurring cost is known before you decide. To get numbers, send the two endpoints through the quote form or write to support. We survey the route before you sign anything, so you commit only after the path and the price are confirmed.

Yes, and this is one of the most common setups: one end of the link lands in your office or another site, the other in our Tier 3+ data centre in Riga. Inside the facility your fiber arrives right next to your servers, colocation equipment and backups, so traffic between office and infrastructure never crosses the public internet. On site you can also order cross-connects to the carriers present in the building, which is useful when you buy transit or additional services from several operators. Tell us during the route check that the data centre is an endpoint and we plan the termination accordingly.

For a dark strand, yes. Your equipment lights the fiber at both ends, which in practice means switches or routers with optical modules suitable for the length of the route. You choose the protocols and the encryption, and you also take on monitoring the link and replacing modules when they fail, because we only maintain the glass itself. That is a good trade for teams with network engineers who want nothing between their two sites. If nobody on your side wants to deal with optics, order a lit service instead: we run it on our DWDM equipment and you simply get an Ethernet port at each end.

Delivery follows the same steps every time. First we verify the path on our footprint and survey both buildings, so the offer is based on a route that actually exists. After you accept, our team splices the fiber along the route and into your premises. The finished link is then measured end to end with an OTDR, and you receive the report together with a route plan, so you can see the quality of every splice and the length of the path. That documentation stays useful later, for repairs and for planning your optics. From handover the link is covered by the SLA.