Processing load and incoming inter-zone network traffic for remote zones during geographically distributed (GEO) erasure coding can be reduced. In one aspect, GEO erasure coding can be performed in multiple phases, wherein each phase can be distributed between zones. Moreover, during a first phase, partially-finished coding chunks can be generated by frontend zones. Further, during an intermediate phase, partially-finished coding chunks that are associated with a common coding chunk can be transferred between the frontend zones and combined to generate consolidated partial coding chunks. Furthermore, during a final phase, the remote zones can receive and combine the consolidated partial coding chunks to generate a complete coding chunk that can be utilized for data recovery.