Twelve resale and wholesale fiber providers make up the 2023 U.S. Fiber Lit Buildings Leaderboard, according to the company that compiles the annual benchmark, Vertical Systems Group.
The Leaderboard consists of service providers who had 15,000 or more on-net buildings, including commercial buildings and data centers, at the end of last year. Those qualifying are, in order of on-net fiber lit buildings: AT&T (tops for the eighth consecutive year), Verizon, Spectrum Enterprise, Comcast Business, Lumen, Cox Business, Zayo, Crown Castle, Frontier, Brightspeed, Breezeline, and Optimum.
Seven companies were named to the 2023 Challenge Tier, which features providers with between 5,000 and 14,999 U.S. fiber lit commercial sites. In alphabetical order, they are: Altafiber (formerly Cincinnati Bell), Consolidated Communications, FirstLight, Great Plains Communications, Ritter Communications, Uniti Fiber and Windstream.
VSG summarized the highlights of the new Leaderboard positions:
- Verizon and Spectrum Enterprise retained second and third positions, respectively.
- Comcast Business moved up to fourth position, displacing Lumen, which dropped to fifth overall. Lumen lost share due to its spinoff of assets to Brightspeed.
- Cox Business remained in sixth position, and gained share that includes fiber assets from Segra and Unite Private Networks, which were both previously cited in the Challenge Tier.
- The base of commercial buildings with two or more fiber providers continues to increase.
Cable providers had significant growth in net new fiber lit commercial buildings last year.
“The number of U.S. fiber lit sites is steadily expanding across every commercial building size segment. Demand is also accelerating from cloud providers and service providers to support the rise in AI, security services, and other applications requiring ultra-high-capacity fiber connectivity to data centers,” said VSG Principal Rosemary Cochran.
The report also included the category of Market Players, which have fewer than 5,000 commercial lit buildings.
A non-exhaustive alphabetized list: 11:11 Systems, ACD, Alaska Communications, American Telesis, Arelion, Armstrong Business Solutions, Astound Business, C Spire, Centracom, Cogent, Conterra, DFN, DQE Communications, Everstream, Exa Infrastructure, ExteNet Systems, Fatbeam, FiberLight, First Digital, Flo Networks, Fusion Connect, GCX, Glo Fiber, Google Fiber, GTT, Hunter Communications, Logix Fiber Networks, Lumos Networks, LS Networks, Mediacom Business, MetroNet Business, Midco, Momentum Telecom, Pilot Fiber, PS Lightwave, Silver Star Telecom, Sonic Business, Sparklight Business, Syringa, Tata Communications, TDS Telecom, TPx, U.S. Signal, Vast Networks, WOW!Business, and Ziply Fiber.