2016 U.S. Fiber Lit Buildings LEADERBOARD

New benchmark ranks the eleven companies with 10,000+ on-net U.S. commercial buildings with lit fiber connections

BOSTON, MA, August 2, 2017 – Vertical Systems Group unveils its first U.S. Fiber Lit Buildings LEADERBOARD with results for year-end 2016. Retail and wholesale fiber providers with 10,000 or more on-net fiber lit commercial buildings in the U.S. qualify for this new benchmark.

Eleven companies attained a position on the 2016 U.S. Fiber Lit Buildings LEADERBOARD as follows (in rank order by number of fiber lit buildings): AT&T, Verizon, Spectrum Enterprise, CenturyLink, Comcast, Level 3, Cox, Lightower, Zayo, Altice USA and Frontier.

The Challenge Tier of providers includes companies with lit fiber connections to between 2,000 and 9,999 U.S. commercial buildings. Seventeen companies qualified for the 2016 Fiber Lit Buildings Challenge Tier as follows (in alphabetical order): Cincinnati Bell, Cleareon, Cogent, Consolidated Communications, Electric Lightwave, Fairpoint, FiberLight, FiberNet Direct, FirstLight, IFN, Lumos, Southern Light, Sunesys, Unite Private Networks, Uniti Fiber, Windstream and XO.

“On-net fiber lit buildings are valued strategic assets that give retail and wholesale providers a competitive edge in profitably delivering services to business customers. A major benefit of a fiber lit building is ready connectivity with provisioning through service orchestration, without the construction cost and extensive lead time required to light a building,” said Rosemary Cochran, principal at Vertical Systems Group. “These dynamics are driving this year’s acquisitions among fiber providers that will significantly impact the U.S. fiber landscape. Eighteen of the twenty-eight Fiber LEADERBOARD and Challenge Tier companies have fiber-related transactions just completed or pending.”

“Eighteen of the twenty-eight Fiber LEADERBOARD and Challenge Tier companies have fiber-related transactions just completed or pending.”

 

All other fiber providers with fewer than 2,000 U.S. commercial fiber lit buildings are in the Market Players tier. The 2016 Market Players tier includes more than two hundred metro, regional and other fiber providers, including the following companies (in alphabetical order): Alpheus, Axia, Birch, C Spire, Centracom, Conterra, DQE Communications, EarthLink Business, Fatbeam, Global Capacity, GTT, Hawaiian Telecom, Hibernia, Hunter Communications, Independents Fiber Network, Infostructure, Logix Communications, LS Networks, Mediacom, Monmouth Telecom, Orca Communications, Pilot Fiber, PS Lightwave, Shentel, Silver Star Telecom, Sovernet, Spirit/Palmettonet, Syringa, TDS Telecom, TPX Communications, U.S. Signal, Veracity, Wilcon, WOW and others.

Detailed 2016 U.S. Fiber Lit Buildings LEADERBOARD results are available now exclusively through the @Fiber Plus research track of Vertical Systems Group’s ENS (Emerging Networks Service). Research content includes rankings and provider profiles for all LEADERBOARD and Challenge Tier companies. Merger and acquisition activity is provided in a directory, with detail for transactions completed by the end of 2016, completed to date in 2017, and pending. Analysis also includes Fiber Lit Building Penetration by provider, which quantifies the relative scope of on-net U.S. footprints for provisioning fiber-based services. Additional content covers a market update on the U.S. business fiber landscape plus the benefits and challenges of fiber deployments. Contact us for subscription information and pricing.