Birch Communications says it added another 130K buildings to its metro fiber reach in Q1. In all, they now reach into some 550K buildings this way, with a goal of a million by the end of the year.
Now, one doesn’t make that sort of 130k expansion in a quarter on one’s own, so clearly they are talking about new relationships and interconnections with their fellow network operators that let them serve all those locations with fiber. If I had to guess, I figure the cable MSOs are a big piece of that connectivity.
Birch’s own IP and fiber reach spans some 32,000 route miles and 715 PoPs now though, statistics which are growing at a rapid clip as they add dark fiber IRUs. Birch plans to add another 600 central offices in the coming months as well and to add further carrier partners.
Meanwhile, Birch is still in the process of making an inorganic move across the border into Canada with the purchase of Primus. I wonder if the US asset roll up is winding down after dozens of deals over the last decade. A shift over to organic push for scale could make some sense, but I think there may yet be some CLEC assets and customer bases in the US left to roll onto their reach.
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Categories: CLEC · Fiber Networks · Mergers and Acquisitions
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Shouldn’t the term “EOC” appear in the PR somewhere?
Not to downplay their expansion but not total fiber-based, correct?
some dark fiber expansion has happened but the overwhelming bulk of the expansion has been cable and ILEC fiber.