Lumen Again Tops Wavelength Services Leaderboard

Lumen retained the top spot in Vertical Systems Group‘s latest rankings for wavelength services providers in the United States.

The market research firm listed Lumen as the top provider of retail and wholesale wavelength services. Zayo finished second, followed by Verizon and AT&T. The latest list for year-end 2022 includes just four providers, down from eight in the year-end 2021 list.

Companies on the wavelength services leaderboard must have 4% or more of the U.S. market for retail and wholesale wavelength services. Wavelength circuits provide Layer 1 dedicated bidirectional gigabit-speed optical fiber connections between two sites.

Vertical Systems Group’s Rick Malone

“Wavelength services are growing steadily, driven by the surge in gigabit bandwidth requirements from carriers, web-scale 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.”

Challenge Tier Added

For the first time, VSG added a “challenge” tier has been added to include providers with between 1% and 4% share of the U.S. wavelength market. This share threshold aligns with the challenge tiers for Vertical Systems Group’s U.S and global provider Ethernet leaderboards. The Challenge tier includes Arelion, Cox Business, Crown Castle and Windstream.

Expansion of the U.S. base of wavelength circuits is being driven by double-digit growth for 100-plus Gbps connections through 2027. Billable installations of 400-plus 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, according to Vertical Systems Group.

Lumen, Verizon and AT&T also rank on both the 2022 U.S. carrier Ethernet leaderboard and the global provider Ethernet services leaderboard. And all four on the leaderboard are ranked on the 2022 U.S. fiber-lit buildings leaderboard.

Market players include all other wavelength providers with U.S. circuit share below the 1% threshold. Those are Cogent, Comcast Business, Spectrum Enterprise, T-Mobile, Ziply Fiber and others.