"Scarcity of fiber is one [factor]... challenging the growth of native Business Ethernet Services," said Rosemary Cochran, an analyst at Vertical Systems Group Inc. in Westwood, Mass.

There are millions of miles of fiber routes for backbone carrier transport, but last-mile connections to business customer sites are only "spottily available," Cochran said.

The problem hits small and midsize businesses the hardest, she added, noting that the number of large corporate sites that have fiber connections is about double the number of buildings housing small and midsize businesses that have such connections, she added.

"There are hundreds of thousands of small and medium-size buildings in the U.S. without access to fiber, which includes remote sites for large nationwide or global enterprises," Cochran said.

However, she did say that service providers are trying to find ways to fill the gaps.  For example, some are forming partnerships with other providers, and some are using alternatives to fiber, such as copper cable, which is engineered to handle higher-density data than traditional copper technology.

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