Birch Chasing Million-Building Fiber Milestone

Birch Communications continues its 2016 fiber expansion frenzy.

Birch said Wednesday that its metro-fiber footprint has increased by 130,000 buildings this year, making a total of 550,000 connected locations.

Tom Stachowiak, Birch’s chief technology officer, called the expansion a major milestone.

“Delivering high-performance fiber and network services to our customers that ultimately make it easier for them to work in the cloud, upload and download large multimedia files and stream video content is essential, and we will continue to invest in expanding our network reach so that customers can activate our dedicated, high-speed Internet services,” he said.

The company has set a goal of reaching 1,000,000 buildings by 2016. Birch now operates an IP network of 32,000 miles and 715 points of presence.

“Our growth into key markets this past couple of quarters is driven by solid demand for high-speed broadband connectivity and a desire to bring more affordable pricing options to our new and existing customers,” said David Gibson, vice president of business development. “We’re pleased to be delivering … network services that deliver Internet connections with speeds up to 1Gbps to meet and exceed connectivity requirements for voice, data, video and cloud application traffic. {ad}

Business fiber penetration has been steadily rising, as evidenced by a recent Vertical Systems Group study. Approximately 46 percent of commercial buildings had fiber in 2015, as opposed to about 11 percent in 2004.

“Fiber access to network services is additionally being pre-built into nearly every new commercial building across the U.S. Business customers want ready accessibility to fiber-based services for the capacity and scalability necessary to future-proof their network,” said Vertical co-founder Rosemary Cochran.