AI-generated infographic: google cloud and lumen last-mile interconnect preview. Its figures are taken from this article. Infographic: Grok.
By news editor
Google Cloud has opened a preview of a managed service that lets companies order a private network link from their own data centers to Google's cloud over Lumen Technologies' network. The service, called partner Cross-Cloud Interconnect for last mile, is available in a single Google Cloud region, us-east4 in Northern Virginia, and Lumen is the only carrier named so far.
The announcement, written by Himanshu Mehra, a director of product management for cloud networking at Google Cloud, lists the places the service is meant to reach as private clouds, on-premises data centers, neoclouds and other clouds. Neoclouds is the post's term for specialized cloud providers, which it associates with AI workloads.
Mehra frames the problem as one of lead time. The post states: "Cloud compute and storage capacity spin up in seconds, while connecting a physical site or private cloud can take weeks or months of manual quoting, cross-connect ordering, and routing configuration." A cross-connect is a physical cable between two parties' equipment inside a data center. With Lumen's last-mile network, the post says, a company can establish a dedicated private connection to Google Cloud "in minutes instead of months." It offers no customer example and no measurement behind that claim.
On capacity, Google lists bandwidth of 1 to 50 Gbps that can be scaled in minutes. For resilience, it says capacity is provisioned in advance across redundant routers in separate facilities, with coordinated maintenance and MACsec encryption, a standard for encrypting traffic on a network link.
Pricing is described but not published. According to the post, customers pay flat-rate bandwidth tiers that include Google Cloud data egress, the charge for moving data out of the cloud, and the model removes idle physical port capacity and cross-connect fees. No rates appear in the post.
Access is by request. Companies that want to join the preview are told to fill in an interest form or contact their Google Cloud or Lumen account team. The post gives no dates for other regions, saying only that they are "coming soon."
This is an extension of an existing product line. Last year, the post says, Google launched partner Cross-Cloud Interconnect for AWS. That version, aimed at cloud providers, connects Google Cloud to providers such as AWS or Oracle's OCI without the customer ordering dedicated physical ports or managing cross-connects. The last-mile version applies the same ordering process and programming interface to sites outside the big clouds, so that network teams can use one procedure for all of them.
Lumen had set an earlier date. In a blog post on the plan, the carrier said it intended to launch the service with Google Cloud and was targeting a public preview in summer 2026. Google's post describes the preview as starting now, which is later than that target. Neither post explains the difference.
The same Lumen post gives the scale of the network behind the service: direct fiber access to more than 163,000 on-net buildings and over 2,200 third-party data centers. How many of those sites the Northern Virginia preview can serve is not disclosed. Google's post quotes Jim Fowler, Lumen's chief technology and product officer, describing the service as a step toward more programmable, cloud-like networking.
Three items remain to watch: the list of additional regions, a published rate card, and a date for general availability. Google's wording that it is starting with Lumen leaves room for other carriers, but the post names none.
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