Vertical Systems Group recently released its U.S. Business Ethernet Leaderboard for year-end 2010, which included AT&T, Verizon and tw Telecom holding down, in order, the top-three spots.
Vertical’s biannual Leaderboard ranks Ethernet service providers with 4 percent or more of the U.S. retail port base. Following tw Telecom in fourth place was Cox Communications and then XO, Qwest, Time Warner Cable and Level 3, respectively, rounding out the remaining four positions.
Vertical said its research results also showed higher-than-expected market growth as enterprises were more confident about purchasing Layer 2 Ethernet services for their ultra-high bandwidth applications, particularly in the financial, education and state/local government segments. As a result, the U.S. Ethernet port base grew 34 percent in the last year, up from Vertical’s previous forecast of 31 percent.
“The top tier of the U.S. Leaderboard solidified during the past year, with AT&T, Verizon and tw Telecom accounting for half of the U.S. retail Ethernet port base. The remaining half of the market is served by the other Leaderboard providers, plus more than 60 additional companies selling Ethernet services to U.S. business customers,” said Rick Malone, principal at Vertical Systems Group. “In 2010, there was also considerable market consolidation due to mergers and acquisitions, primarily among Tier 2 and Tier 3 providers. A common driver for these deals was acquiring fiber assets in order to expand network infrastructures and deepen direct fiber delivery of Ethernet services. Look for more of these transactions in 2011.”
Other key results of Vertical’s latest share analysis included:
- Only three of the eight 2010 Leaderboard providers increased their port share as compared to the prior year.
- Competitive providers and cable MSOs dominated the second tier of the Leaderboard.
- XO edged out Qwest to move up to fifth position on the 2010 Leaderboard. Level 3 moved up to eighth position over Cogent, which dropped off the Leaderboard.
- All other providers not represented on the Leaderboard account for nearly 20 percent of the 2010 U.S. retail Ethernet port base.
- The number of U.S. ports delivered to enterprise sites through new Ethernet exchanges was negligible in 2010.
Other providers delivering business Ethernet services in the U.S. market included: AboveNet, CenturyLink, Charter Business, Cogent, Comcast Business, Covad (a unit of MegaPath), Expedient, FiberLight, Frontier, Global Crossing, Lightower, Masergy, NTT, Optimum Lightpath, Orange, Paetec, Reliance Globalcom, Savvis, Sidera Networks (formerly RCN Metro), Sprint, Suddenlink, Windstream, Zayo Group and others.