30 Mar Access to Business Fiber Continues to Climb in Europe and the U.S.
New deployments boost availability of fiber access to business services, however more than one million commercial buildings remain in the
BOSTON, MA, MARCH 30, 2012 — The availability of business fiber continued to climb in 2011, with facilities available to 20.5% of commercial buildings across Europe, and 31.8% of commercial buildings in the U.S., according to new research from Vertical Systems Group. These metrics are an indicator of the penetration of direct fiber supplied by one or multiple network Service Providers in commercial buildings with twenty or more employees. Buildings that are not fiber-connected comprise the “Fiber Gap”.
Throughout the world, direct fiber is the preferred access technology for higher-bandwidth business network services, particularly Carrier Ethernet. Advantages of fiber connectivity include ease of provisioning, operational simplicity, bandwidth scalability and lower costs per bit as compared to other alternatives.
“Access to business fiber has more than doubled between 2005 and 2011, both in Europe and in the U.S., however more than one million buildings in these markets are still not fiber-connected,” said Rosemary Cochran, principal at Vertical Systems Group. “Domestic and global Service Providers will continue to strategically broaden and deepen their fiber infrastructures. A challenge for businesses caught in the fiber gap is to determine when their building sites will be connected via fiber to these service networks.”
Comprehensive analysis of fiber penetration statistics for U.S. and Europe is available exclusively through the @Fiber research track of Vertical Systems Group’s ENS (Emerging Networks Service). Research content covers the period 2004 through 2011, and includes quantification by customer segment (Large Enterprise and SMB) and building segment (20-50 employees, 51-100 employees, 101-250 employees and 251+ employees).