01 Apr 2019 U.S. Fiber Lit Buildings LEADERBOARD
AT&T ranks #1 for fourth consecutive year; Fiber Lit Buildings exceed one million
BOSTON, MA, April 2, 2020 – Vertical Systems Group’s 2019 U.S. Fiber Lit Buildings LEADERBOARD results are as follows (in rank order by number of on-net fiber lit buildings): AT&T, Verizon, Spectrum Enterprise, CenturyLink, Comcast, Cox, Crown Castle Fiber, Frontier, Zayo, Altice USA, Atlantic Broadband, Windstream and Consolidated Communications. These thirteen retail and wholesale fiber providers qualify for this benchmark with 10,000 or more on-net U.S. fiber lit commercial buildings as of year-end 2019.
Additionally, twelve companies qualify for the 2019 Challenge Tier as follows (in alphabetical order): Cincinnati Bell, Cleareon, Cogent, Conterra, DQE Communications, Everstream, FirstLight, IFN, Logix Fiber Networks, Segra, Unite Private Networks, and Uniti Fiber. These fiber providers each qualify for the 2019 Challenge Tier with between 2,000 and 9,999 U.S. fiber lit commercial buildings.
“The number of on-net fiber lit commercial buildings exceeded one million in 2019 as network providers concentrated on U.S. footprint expansion. New fiber deployments are providing dedicated access to network services, connecting 5G small cells, enabling low latency for edge computing, and supporting the massive bandwidth surge for webscale companies,” said Rosemary Cochran, principal of Vertical Systems Group. “Our 2020 outlook is that while essential fiber deployments will proceed, some planned installations will be adjusted due to unanticipated capacity demands caused by the coronavirus crisis.”
YE 2019 Fiber Provider Research Highlights
- AT&T retains the #1 rank on the Fiber Lit Buildings LEADERBOARD for the fourth consecutive year.
- The top four companies – AT&T, Verizon, Spectrum Enterprise and CenturyLink – each have more than 100,000 on-net fiber lit buildings.
- Atlantic Broadband (#11) and Consolidated Communications (#13) attain a LEADERBOARD rank for the first time, moving up from the Challenge Tier.
- Windstream drops to the #12 position, down from #11 in the prior year.
- Conterra, DQE Communications and Everstream all advance to the Challenge Tier, moving up from the Market Player tier.
- GTT and FiberLight drop into the Market Player tier from Challenge Tier.
Market Players include all other fiber providers with fewer than 2,000 U.S. commercial fiber lit buildings. The 2019 Market Players tier includes more than two hundred metro, regional and other fiber providers, including the following companies (in alphabetical order): Armstrong, C Spire, Centracom, CTS Telecom, Douglas Fast Net, EnTouch Business, ExteNet Systems, Fatbeam, FiberLight, Fusion, Google Fiber, GTT, Hunter Communications, LS Networks, Mediacom Business, MetroNet Business, Midco Business, Pilot Fiber, PS Lightwave, Shentel Business, Silver Star Telecom, Syringa, TDS Telecom, TPX Communications, U.S. Signal, Veracity, WOW!Business and others.
For this analysis, a fiber lit building is defined as a commercial site or data center that has on-net optical fiber connectivity to a network provider’s infrastructure, plus active service termination equipment onsite. Excluded from this analysis are standalone cell towers, small cells not located in fiber lit buildings, near net buildings, buildings classified as coiled at curb or coiled in building, HFC-connected buildings, carrier central offices, residential buildings, and private or dark fiber installations.
Vertical Systems Group’s U.S. Fiber Lit Buildings LEADERBOARD is the industry’s annual benchmark for measuring business fiber market leadership. Provider rankings are based on shares of fiber lit commercial buildings. Detailed U.S. fiber shares, statistics, trends, provider profiles and market analysis are available exclusively to ENS Research Program subscribers of @Fiber Plus. Contact us for subscription information and pricing.