BOSTON, MA, June 17, 2024 – Vertical Systems Group’s 2023 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, Comcast Business, Lumen, Cox Business, Zayo, Crown Castle, Frontier, Brightspeed, Breezeline  and Optimum. These twelve retail and wholesale fiber providers qualify for this benchmark as of year-end 2023 with 15,000 or more on-net U.S. fiber lit sites, which includes commercial buildings and Data Centers.

Additionally, seven companies attain a 2023 Challenge Tier citation as follows (in alphabetical order): Altafiber (formerly Cincinnati Bell), Consolidated Communications, FirstLight, Great Plains Communications, Ritter Communications, Uniti Fiber, and Windstream. These fiber providers each qualify for the 2023 Challenge Tier with between 5,000 and 14,999 U.S. fiber lit commercial sites.

“The number of U.S. fiber lit sites is steadily expanding across every commercial building size segment. Demand is also accelerating from cloud providers and service providers to support the rise in AI, security services, and other applications requiring ultra-high capacity fiber connectivity to Data Centers,” said Rosemary Cochran, principal of Vertical Systems Group.

U.S. Fiber Lit Buildings LEADERBOARD Highlights

• AT&T ranks #1 on the U.S. Fiber Lit Buildings LEADERBOARD for the eighth consecutive year.
• Verizon and Spectrum Enterprise retain second and third positions, respectively.
• Comcast Business moves up to fourth position, displacing Lumen, which dips to fifth overall. Lumen lost share in this fiber segment due to its spinoff of assets to Brightspeed.
• Cox Business remains in sixth position, and gains share that includes fiber assets from Segra and Unite Private Networks, which were both previously cited in the Challenge Tier.
• As a result, the Challenge Tier roster drops from nine to seven companies.
• The base of commercial buildings with two or more fiber providers continues to increase.
• Cable providers had significant growth in net new fiber lit commercial buildings during 2023.

Market Players include all other fiber providers with fewer than 5,000 U.S. commercial fiber lit buildings.  The 2023 Market Players tier covers more than two hundred metro, regional and other fiber providers, including the following companies (in alphabetical order): 11:11 Systems, ACD, Alaska Communications, American Telesis, Arelion, Armstrong Business Solutions, Astound Business, C Spire, Centracom, Cogent, Conterra, DFN, DQE Communications, Everstream, Exa Infrastructure, ExteNet Systems, Fatbeam, FiberLight, First Digital, Flo Networks, Fusion Connect, GCX, Glo Fiber, Google Fiber, GTT, Hunter Communications, Logix Fiber Networks, Lumos Networks, LS Networks, Mediacom Business, MetroNet Business, Midco, Momentum Telecom, Pilot Fiber, PS Lightwave, Silver Star Telecom, Sonic Business, Sparklight Business, Syringa, Tata Communications, TDS Telecom, TPx, U.S. Signal, Vast Networks, WOW!Business, Ziply Fiber, 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.

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