Eleven fiber providers in 2020 U.S. Fiber Lit Buildings Leaderboard top tier

Vertical Systems Group has released its annual U.S. Fiber Lit Buildings Leaderboard for 2020, with 11 retail and wholesale fiber providers managing to reach top-tier status with at least 15,000 lit commercial buildings by year’s end. AT&T retained the top spot on the scorecard for the fifth consecutive year, the market research firm reports.

For the purposes of the Leaderboard, 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.” 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 are excluded from the market research firm’s totals.

Vertical Systems Group organizes the fiber providers it monitors into three groups: Leaderboard, Challenge Tier, and Market Players. With the number of lit buildings in the U.S. growing, the analysts have raised the bar for the Leaderboard from the previous 10,000 lit buildings to 15,000. Joining AT&T in the lit-building penthouse are Verizon, Spectrum Enterprise, Lumen, Comcast, Cox, Crown Castle Fiber, Atlantic Broadband, Frontier, Zayo, and Altice USA. Atlantic Broadband was busy in 2020, leading them to climb from 11^th place to 8^th on the list.

The Leaderboard group’s change in requirements wasn’t kind to Windstream and Consolidated Communications, who found themselves sent to the Challenge Tier, now for companies with between 2,000 and 14,999 commercial lit buildings in the U.S. Other providers in the tier include Cincinnati Bell, Cleareon, Cogent, Conterra, DQE Communications, Everstream, FirstLight, IFN, Logix Fiber Networks, Segra, Unite Private Networks, and Uniti Fiber. Meanwhile, the Market Players group of metro, regional and other fiber providers with fewer than 2,000 U.S. commercial fiber lit buildings numbers more than 200 members, according to Vertical Systems Group.

“The base of fiber-lit buildings in the U.S. expanded in 2020, although the pace of new installations was hampered by the pandemic. Challenges for fiber providers ranged from impeded installations due to commercial building closures and business shutdowns to supply chain disruptions,” commented Rosemary Cochran, principal of Vertical Systems Group. “As the economy rebounds in 2021, fiber providers have opportunities to monetize the millions of small and medium U.S. commercial buildings without fiber, as well as larger multi-tenant buildings with only a single fiber provider. However, it remains uncertain how changes in U.S. regulatory policies and federal funding could alter fiber investments and deployment plans in the next several years.”

Data for the Leaderboard comes from Vertical Systems Group’s ENS Research Program for @Fiber Plus subscribers. Research content covers fiber lit building analysis for five building segments (<20, 20–50, 51–100, 101–250, 251+ employees), quantification of U.S. fiber market opportunities, and the share detail with building counts by provider Vertical’s fiber research incorporates the impact of COVID-19, including detailed assumptions.

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