Lumen retains dominant share of wavelength services market

Lumen, which continues to expand its business fiber network infrastructure, is hanging onto the number one position on Vertical System Group’s year-end 2022 U.S. Wavelength Services LEADERBOARD.

The research firm announced that four companies achieved a position on the (in rank order based on billable circuit share): Lumen, Zayo, Verizon, and AT&T. To qualify for a rank on this LEADERBOARD, companies must have four percent (4%) or more of the U.S. market for retail and wholesale wavelength services.

Three U.S. Wavelength Services LEADERBOARD companies – Lumen, Verizon and AT&T – are also ranked on the 2022 U.S. Carrier Ethernet LEADERBOARD and the Global Provider Ethernet Services LEADERBOARD.

Wavelength circuits provide Layer 1 dedicated bidirectional gigabit-speed optical fiber connections between two sites like a multi-site enterprise or a data center.

According to the research group, the critical driver for wavelength services is expanding the U.S. base of wavelength circuits driven by double-digit growth for 100+ Gbps connections through 2027. Additionally, billable installations of 400+ Gbps services are emerging as wavelength providers expand availability and roll out new solutions.

Customer demand for retail wavelength circuits continued to outpace wholesale deployments in 2022.

“Wavelength services are growing steadily, driven by the surge in gigabit bandwidth requirements from carriers, webscale network operators, and enterprises,” said Rick Malone, principal of Vertical Systems Group. “In the past year, the sweet spot jumped from 10 Gbps to 100 Gbps for new customer purchases due to more competitive pricing for higher speed wavelengths.”

For this year’s LEADERBOARD, VSG added a Challenge Tier for the first time to include providers with between 1% and 4% share of the U.S. Wavelength market. VSG said this share threshold aligns with the Challenge Tiers for Vertical Systems Group’s U.S and Global Provider Ethernet LEADERBOARDs. Arelion (formerly Telia Carrier), Cox Business, Crown Castle, and Windstream attained a Challenge Tier citation on the 2022 U.S. Wavelength Services LEADERBOARD (in alphabetical order): 

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