Metro Fiber and Lit Buildings Update

August 24th, 2008 by · 9 Comments

Back in May and June, I ran a series of posts looking at the various independent metro fiber companies in the marketplace within the USA.  Well, a quarter has passed, and of course the world is not static, and quite a few companies have updated their numbers.  I plan to update the list periodically, hopefully drawing out new information and even new companies (nope, I certainly don’t know them all even after a fair amount of digging) from helpful readers.  With no further ado, here is the list:

Metro Fiber Summary
Company Route Miles Buildings Route Miles per Building
Black Rock Cable 612 731 0.8
Optimum Lightpath 2,700 2,700 1.0
Southern Light Fiber 1,000 800 1.3
American Fiber Systems 1,000 540 1.9
TW Telecom 25,930 10,390 2.5
AGL Networks 565 211 2.7
XO Communications 9,000 3,000 3.0
Level 3 26,000 7,600 3.4
Abovenet 4,500 1,300 3.5
Integra Telecom 2,200 580 3.8
RCN Metro 5,626 1,200 4.7
Zayo ~6,000 1,247 4.8
Cavtel Wholesale 1,550 300 5.2
FiberLight 1,400 250 5.6
US Signal 700 100 7.0
Cogent 10,400 1,270 8.2
IP Networks Inc 400 40 10.0
Fibertech 2,300 200 11.5
SRPNet Telecom 950 55 17.3
Edison Carrier Solutions 3,000 116 25.9

This month’s new entrant is Black Rock Cable, from whom I received an email with the appropriate data a few weeks ago. Black Rock Cable, which is not a cable company and which runs fiber rings throughout three counties north of Seattle, may be small but it is also very dense – averaging just 0.8 route miles per building.  This is another of those companies with a laser-like focus which have surprised me since beginning to compile this table. They know their market very well and can compete and win against the local incumbent. There must be others like them out there that I haven’t run into yet, so if you know of one please ping me!

TW Telecom made steady progress, adding another 250 or so buildings to their networks.  Level 3’s buildout seemed to cool off, any progress there was a rounding error in the second quarter.  Optimum Lightpath  connected a few hundred buildings, and they also announced the acquisition of 4Connections which will probably change their profile by when it closes.  Cogent keeps adding 25 buildings per quarter, and I expect with the pressure on their datacenter-centric business they will continue to add new enterprise buildings in an attempt to diversify.  Most of the other companies have not updated their public numbers since I last checked.  I adjusted Zayo’s numbers based on new data, I had included some planned on-net buildings in the total – I took them out but we will see them phase in through the year no doubt.

I am aware of but still lack sufficient information on the metro assets of the following:  Alpheus, Southern Telecom, ITC Deltacom, FPL Fibernet, Balsam West Fibernet, and Enventis.

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Categories: CLEC · Metro fiber

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