AT&T exceeds all other U.S. service providers in fiber lit buildings, according to the Vertical Systems Group’s 2018 U.S. Fiber Lit Buildings Leaderboard. AT&T came in tops in Vertical Systems fiber lit buildings research for the third consecutive year.
Vertical Systems Group defines a fiber lit building 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 for purpose of the Leaderboard rankings 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.
Other market leaders, though trailing AT&T, were (in order) Verizon, Spectrum Enterprise, CenturyLink, Comcast, Cox, Crown Castle Fiber, Frontier, Zayo, Altice USA, and Windstream. Each of these companies had 10,000 or more on-net U.S. fiber lit commercial buildings as of year-end 2018, according to the research firm.
The Leaderboard also listed 13 companies in the Challenger Tier – 2,000 to 9,999 U.S. fiber lit buildings: Atlantic Broadband, Cincinnati Bell, Cleareon, Cogent, Consolidated Communications, FiberLight, FirstLight, GTT, IFN, Logix Fiber Networks, Segra, Unite Private Networks and Uniti Fiber.
“Following a flurry of mergers and acquisitions, fiber providers focused on new buildouts in 2018 to meet customer demand for higher speed dedicated access to business services and to support 5G pilots,” said Rosemary Cochran, principal of Vertical Systems Group, in a prepared statement. “Our research shows that while the majority of large and medium size commercial buildings in the U.S. are fiber lit with one or more providers, relatively few small multi-tenant buildings are fiber connected. Cable MSOs and regional network operators have been most actively targeting fiber investment opportunities in this underserved segment.”
