Arelion mobilizes cross-border channel expansion

Dive Brief

Sweden-based Arelion, which added Intelisys as a North American technology service distributor partner in October 2024, said this week it is expanding its Conflict-Free Channel Program alongside a significant network buildout, giving technology advisors broader access to its Tier-1 backbone as enterprise demand for 100G and 400G wavelength services continues to grow.
The wholesale carrier now operates 10 Points of Presence in Mexico, including a cross-border route from Tijuana to San Diego launched in July 2025 and two fully diverse underground DWDM routes between Querétaro and Monterrey. In October 2025, the company added a PoP at RACK59's Oklahoma City data center, providing access to what Arelion calls its North American AI superhighway.
Arelion says its Mexico network and channel expansions were coordinated, with the company training TAs through TSD partners as its footprint grew. The carrier has direct channel partners in Mexico, Guatemala and Peru in addition to its North American TSD relationships.

Dive Insight

Arelion's push into the indirect channel comes as enterprises shopping for multinational WAN solutions are evaluating Tier-1 connectivity options early in the buying process. The Intelisys partnership is designed to get Arelion into those conversations sooner, particularly for deals involving distributed cloud, data center and enterprise environments that need consistent performance across regions.

“For all the innovation in our industry, it's still very much a relationship-driven business,” Robert Westervelt, Arelion’s head of global channel sales, told Channel Dive via email.

The network behind those relationships is worth understanding. It took Arelion 30 years to reach 100 Tbit/s of edge traffic, a milestone it hit in 2023. It only took another two and a half years to reach 200 Tbit/s. The company has said its backbone spans more than 77,000 km and connects to more than 350 PoPs across 129 countries.

The Mexico buildout reflects continued market momentum. Querétaro alone hosts 15% of Mexico's total data center footprint, with projections of 73 data centers in the region by 2029, according to Arelion’s September press release, citing Mexico Business News. Nearshoring activity in Tijuana — spanning aerospace, electronics and medical supply manufacturing — is driving demand for cross-border connectivity that channel partners in the southwestern U.S. are increasingly being asked to address.

The Conflict-Free Channel Program uses an overlay model in which TAs and Arelion account directors collaborate on opportunities rather than compete for them. It's a sensible structure on paper, and Arelion cited its NPS score of 72, suggesting customers are reasonably satisfied. But the more meaningful test of a conflict-free claim will be when partners say so on the record.

That said, for channel partners, Arelion's decision to treat North America and Latin America as a single ecosystem rather than separate regional programs has a practical upside: a customer with operations on both sides of the border is one, not two, opportunities, and the partner owns the whole relationship.