According to Vertical Systems Group, the availability of optical fiber connectivity to large and medium size commercial buildings in the United States reached 54.8% in 2017. As a result, what the company calls "the U.S. Fiber Gap" has dropped to less than 50% for the first time. The annual research is intended to quantify the scope of fiber-lit buildings in the United States with 20 or more employees.
"More commercial U.S. buildings were newly lit with fiber during 2017 than in any other year since we initiated this research in 2004. The number of net new fiber-lit buildings increased across every building size segment, and most substantially for medium size sites," said Rosemary Cochran, principal of Vertical Systems Group. "Deployments will continue to accelerate because fiber is both a strategic asset for delivery of wireline business services, as well as a necessity for enabling 5G."
For the analysis, a fiber-lit building is defined 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 from the 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.