CenturyLink retains its market leading position over AT&T; Growth in higher speed services accelerating

BOSTON, MA, AUGUST 23, 2018 – Vertical Systems Group announces results of its U.S. Carrier Ethernet LEADERBOARD analysis for Mid-Year 2018. The following seven companies achieved LEADERBOARD status (rank order based on retail port share): CenturyLink, AT&T, Verizon, Spectrum Enterprise, Comcast, Windstream and Cox

To qualify for the LEADERBOARD, providers must have four percent (4%) or more of the U.S. Ethernet services market. Shares are measured by the number of customer ports in service as tracked by Vertical Systems Group, with input from surveys of Ethernet providers.

“After a flurry of M&A activity during the past two years, the Ethernet marketplace stabilized during the first half of 2018,” said Rick Malone, principal of Vertical Systems Group. “U.S. port growth was more than 6 percent for the period, with accelerating deployments of multi-gigabit speed services. Most providers experienced acute price compression across all data rates, partially offsetting the revenue typically generated from higher speed services. All providers are grappling with longer sales cycles due to SD-WAN, however the impact on the U.S. Ethernet base has been negligible to date.”

Other providers selling Ethernet services in the U.S. are segmented into two tiers as measured by port share. The first or Challenge Tier includes providers with between 1% and 4% share of the U.S. retail Ethernet market. For Mid-Year 2018, the following companies attained a position in the Challenge Tier (in alphabetical order): Altice USA, Cogent, Frontier, GTT, Sprint and Zayo.

The second or Market Player tier includes all providers with port share below 1%. Companies in the Market Player tier include the following providers (in alphabetical order):
Alaska Communications, American Telesis, BT Global Services, Cincinnati Bell, Consolidated Communications, Crown Castle Fiber, DQE Communications, Expedient, FiberLight, FirstLight, Fusion, Global Cloud Xchange, Great Plains Communications, Hawaiian Telecom, Logix Fiber Networks, LS Networks, Lumos Networks, Masergy, MegaPath, Midco, NTT America, Orange Business, RCN Business, Tata, TDS Telecom, Telstra, TPx Communications, Unite Private Networks, US Signal, Vodafone, WOW!Business and other companies selling retail Ethernet services in the U.S. market.

Detailed Ethernet share results that power the Mid-Year 2018 Carrier Ethernet LEADERBOARD are available now exclusively through Vertical Systems Group’s ENS Research Program subscribers of @Ethernet. Contact us for subscription information and pricing.