CenturyLink has the largest carrier Ethernet market share in the U.S., followed by AT&T, Verizon, Spectrum Enterprise, Comcast and Windstream, according to the 2018 Vertical System Group Carrier Ethernet Leaderboard. The companies each have at least 4% of the market in the United States.
The market is getting bigger but the revenue dynamics are changing. “Despite its relative maturity, the Ethernet market continues to expand at a healthy pace. U.S. port installations grew more than twelve percent in 2018, in line with our forecasts,” Rick Malone, the principal of Vertical Systems Group, said in a press release. “However, revenue growth is not keeping pace with port growth due to falling prices and changing service mixes. One notable catalyst is the deployment of SD-WAN, which is resulting in customers shifting from switched Ethernet services to dedicated Internet access.”
Carrier Ethernet Market Share
Here are highlights of VSG’s findings:
- U.S. retail Ethernet customer installations grew to more than 1.1 million ports, up 12 percent from year-end 2017.
- Six Ethernet providers qualify for the 2018 LEADERBOARD, as compared to seven in 2017 and nine in 2016.
- Cox dropped out of the LEADERBOARD and into the Challenge Tier on slower than market port growth.
- Four Incumbent Carriers (CenturyLink, AT&T, Verizon, Windstream) and two Cable MSOs (Spectrum Enterprise, Comcast) are represented on the latest LEADERBOARD.
- Each of the 2018 U.S. LEADERBOARD companies has received MEF CE 2.0 certification.
- The two Cable MSOs (Spectrum Enterprise and Comcast) had the highest port growth in the second half of 2018.
- Ethernet pricing declined in 2018 across all port speeds for the six service types tracked by Vertical (i.e., EPL, EVPL, DIA, Access to VPN, Switched Metro and VPLS).
VSG also said that seven companies reached the Challenge Tier, which is between 1% and 4% of the U.S. retail Ethernet market. They are (in alphabetical order): Altice USA, Cogent, Cox, Frontier, GTT, Sprint and Zayo.
The Market Player Tier are those below 1%. Those include Alaska Communications, American Telesis, Atlantic Broadband, BT Global Services, Cincinnati Bell, Consolidated Communications, Crown Castle Fiber, DQE Communications, Expedient, FiberLight, FirstLight, Fusion, Global Cloud Xchange, Great Plains Communications, Logix Fiber Networks, LS Networks, Masergy, Midco, NTT America, Orange Business, RCN Business, Segra, Tata, TDS Telecom, Telstra, TPx, Unite Private Networks, US Signal, WOW!Business and others.
CenturyLink’s top finish was not a surprise, as it was tops on the Leaderboard that VSG compiled last August as well.
Image courtesy of flickr user Yuri Samoilov.
