Many internet-based companies rely on major cloud service providers to stay online, including Netflix, which uses Amazon’s AWS. But Dropbox is going in the opposite direction. Last year it moved most of its users’ data off AWS and on to its own cloud storage network. Now Dropbox wants to ditch the internet in favor of its own private network.

The problem Dropbox is trying to overcome is the bottlenecks and slowdown present on the increasingly complex internet. You can’t always guarantee the speed of a connection due to factors outside of your control, so Dropbox intends to bypass them completely(Opens in a new window) with a worldwide private data network separate from the public internet, which it has been working towards since 2015.

This expansion includes North America, Europe, and Australia with the private network being built up from purchases of dark fiber when it becomes available. “We essentially purchase dark fiber within the metro areas and leased services for the long haul across the Atlantic and Pacific,” Dan Williams, Dropbox’s head of production engineering, tells Fortune(Opens in a new window). “We’re not in the business of laying cable, only a few companies in the world need that sort of capability.”

Dropbox handles over 500 petabytes of data for its users, most of which will now be stored on its own storage network and increasingly synced over a private network where speeds can be guaranteed regardless of what’s happening on the internet. According to Williams, the goal is “to make user experience as real time as possible since 70 percent of our users are outside the US and most of the data lives in North America.”

Critics are scratching their heads as the majority of services are moving in the opposite direction. However, Dropbox is generating a profit, according to CEO Drew Houston, and networking costs have been cut in half outside of North America thanks to this shift. If the company can complete a worldwide private network insulated from the internet while remaining profitable, those critics will soon change their minds and applaud Dropbox for a risky move ultimately paying off.

For Dropbox users, this shift to a private network should happen seamlessly if it hasn’t happened already. Dropbox plans to introduce new “regional accelerators” in Sydney, Miami, and Paris in Q3 2017 and then Madrid and Milan in Q4. So users in those areas may see their syncing speeds improve by the end of the year.

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