Lumen Leads U.S. Carrier Ethernet Leaderboard as MSOs Rise

Source: Vertical Systems Group

Lumen Technologies continues to lead the Vertical Systems Group U.S. Ethernet leaderboard as its MSO carrier rivals grow their market share.

The market research firm unveiled its 2021 Year-End U.S. Carrier Ethernet Services leaderboard. Lumen continued to land at the top of the list. It has done so since 2017. Following CenturyLink’s acquisition of Level 3 Communications, rebranded Lumen has never looked back.

The VSG rankings come the same day that Lumen announced an investment in its high-bandwidth Ethernet architecture. The company says it will be able to offer upgraded Ethernet services to more than 40 cities by year’s end. Lumen recently rolled out these services in nine cities with nine more getting access to 30 gigabits per second early next month.

AT&T and Spectrum trail Lumen on VSG’s list in second and third place, respectively.

Cable on the Rise

The cable providers on the list – Spectrum Enterprise, Comcast Business and Cox Business – installed the most new billable Ethernet customer ports in 2021. Moreover, VSG noted that Spectrum’s 1,200-plus employees who hold MEF certifications for carrier Ethernet are the most in the industry.

“U.S. Ethernet port growth stabilized in 2021, following stifled market demand throughout the previous year,” said Rick Malone, principal of Vertical Systems Group.

Vertical Systems Group’s Rick Malone

Windstream slipped down into the challenger tier from last time. Otherwise the order of the leaderboard did not change from the Mid-Year 2021 Leaderboard.

Vertical Systems Group also concluded that carrier-managed SD-WAN customers are predominantly using Ethernet as their dedicated internet access (DIA) underlay solution.

“Our latest research shows how enterprise SD-WAN transformations are impacting the Ethernet market as customers increase installations of high speed DIA connectivity in their networks, and decrease use of legacy switched Ethernet services,” Malone said.

Lumen sits fifth on the latest VSG leaderboard for managed SD-WAN.