Fiber to 39.3% of Commercial Buildings, Not Too Shabby

According to Vertical Systems Group, the ongoing industry-wide rollout of fiber to the business markets continues to make steady progress. The industry aggregate percentage of on-net commercial buildings with 20+ employees spent 2013 rising to 39.3%, up from 36.1% the prior year and 31.8% the year before that. Back when I started Ramblings, this number was still in the teens.

The trend has been strong across an increasingly wider range of industry participants. More alternative network operators that once focused either on wholesale or on reaching enterprises via the traditional CLEC copper routes are now in the fiber camp. And the incumbents have not been idle either, and AT&T has even been talking about the buildings it brings on-net.

But the biggest piece of the increase lately has probably been the wave of Cable MSO investment in the enterprise sector. With their HFC customers as a starting point and lots of resources to spend, they have roared into SME end of the sector and still have plenty of room left to run even as they look to the larger and multisite opportunities.

Even now though, more than half of such locations don’t have fiber, so there’s plenty of work left to do. Furthermore, the rate of growth seems to have slowed down in 2013. That’s probably because most of the obvious cherries have been picked of course, so progress from here will start to come down to who can make the economics work for more of the less obvious ones.   That could be because of the market itself being off the beaten path, or because of the nature of the businesses in the buildings just means less demand.  But there are still a lot out there that do make sense.

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Categories: Cable · CLEC · ILECs, PTTs · Metro fiber