AT&T Tops Global Ethernet Providers, Trailed by Colt, Orange Business

AT&T continued to lead providers in the rebounding Ethernet services market.

Vertical Systems Group on Tuesday unveiled its 2020 Year-End Global Provider Ethernet Services Leaderboard. The report touched on how the pandemic paused market growth.

Source: Vertical Systems Group

Vertical Systems Group’s Rick Malone

“The global Ethernet services market declined slightly in 2020 due to pandemic related factors such as supply chain disruptions, travel restrictions and widespread office vacancies,” said Rick Malone, principal of Vertical Systems Group.

AT&T finished ahead of U.K.-based Colt and France-based Orange Business.

AT&T first secured first place in 2018.

The leaderboard changed slightly since the 2020 Mid-Year leaderboard. Orange Business leapfrogged Lumen (CenturyLink) into third, and Verizon leapfrogged BT Global Services into fifth.

Eight companies slotted into the “challenger tier,” meaning that they held between 2% and 4% of billable retail ethernet ports outside of their home country.

The report calculated the global Ethernet port base dropped in installations last year. Port growth had reached double digits in 2019, according to Vertical Systems Group.

VSG pointed to Italy, Spain, Brazil, Germany and U.K. as markets “appreciably impacted” by COVID-19.

“We expect that demand for Ethernet bandwidth will rebound this year as multinational customers invest heavily in high-speed cloud and internet services for mission-critical applications,” Malone said.

The rankings varied significantly when we recently covered VSG’s 2020 Year-End U.S. Carrier Ethernet Leaderboard. Lumen led AT&T and Spectrum Enterprise, respectively. The study outlined additional factors that hampered 2020 Ethernet growth, including the rise of SD-WAN.