Spectrum Enterprise fiber investment will exceed $1 billion for 2018 –the second year that unit of Charter Communications has received investment dollars exceeding $1 billion. The investment by the company will primarily be used to increase the density of its national fiber network. It also will finance new tools, training and client services.
The investment will add to Spectrum Enterprises’ national fiber ring, which now has almost 200,000 fiber-lit buildings in 41 states and adds an average of 50 buildings daily.
“As fiber connectivity has become fundamental to economic growth, we are focused on making our fiber infrastructure more accessible to clients, and reshaping their experience to align with the evolving realities of today’s modern enterprise,” Phil Meeks, the Executive Vice President and President of Spectrum Enterprise, said in a press release. “Advanced video and virtual reality solutions, cloud, IoT and the future of 5G all depend on a reliable and highly-dense fiber network. Our commitment is to ensure that our clients have the most robust fiber network and solutions to grow today and take advantage of future technologies that have immense demands on bandwidth.”
The new fiber will mostly be deployed within the existing fiber ring. To fulfill the goal of removing barriers to access, Spectrum Enterprise will absorb upfront costs of fiber construction for new enterprise clients within its footprint.
Spectrum Enterprise’s aggressive approach is not unique. Telecommunications companies are competing to add buildings to their fiber networks to capture a higher percentage of the markets that they serve. Last month, Vertical Systems Group released its updated LEADERBOARD. The firm found that Spectrum Enterprise had the third most on-net lit fiber buildings in the U.S. It follows AT&T and Verizon and finished ahead of CenturyLink, Comcast, Cox, Crown Fiber, Frontier and Altice. VSG said that it is seeing fiber expansion in the planning of every major network service provider.
