According to a recent study, the “fiber gap” to businesses across the nation is steadily closing, but 64 percent of commercial buildings in the United States don’t have access to fiber-based network services.
Vertical Systems Group’s latest report said that despite the current gap, business fiber availability has more than tripled since 2004 when the penetration rate was 11 percent.
“Direct fiber is clearly the preferred access technology for Carrier Ethernet services, as well as for higher speed connectivity to IP VPNs, cloud-based applications and the Internet. Enterprise customers prefer direct fiber due to the benefits of scalability to multi-gigabit speeds plus lower bandwidth costs as compared to other access options,” said Rosemary Cochran, principal at Vertical Systems Group. “The U.S. fiber gap has been steadily closing each year and this trend will continue. A top growth challenge cited by both retail and wholesale network operators is the expansion of their fiber footprints as rapidly as possible to meet customer demand for higher speed services.”
Vertical Systems Group’s ENS (emerging network services) research covers fiber penetration from 2005 to 20012 across enterprise and small-to-medium-sized businesses, as well as building sizes.
