Waves in this case generally refers to 10G/100G leased optical circuit capacity.

As has already been mentioned, I did mean optical waves. Comes from my perspective as a network guy who uses lots of optical transport and DWDM systems. Realized I should have been more specific about optical waves, especially in this forum. Even more specifically, “waves” are generally a product provided you by someone else who lights the fiber for you. In this case, probably Zayo, Lumen, Crown Castle, and maybe even Google operating the fiber. Generally 10G waves, or some multiple there of, although 100G waves are out there, and 400G are coming/testing/just entering production.

In this case, I suspect it means 10G waves given the currently estimated capacity of the ground stations. Moving to dark lets them do Nx10G links more cost effectively, or 100G link if the distance is short enough (around 100km at the moment before you have to go to the much more expensive coherent optics). And you can do you own support and monitoring, which I got the impression was part of their problem with Google’s NOC.