Optical fiber facilities currently reach 36.1% of U.S. commercial buildings, leaving the remaining 63.9% in the ‘Fiber Gap’ with no accessibility to fiber-based network services, according to latest research from Vertical Systems Group. However despite today’s gap, business fiber availability has more than tripled since 2004 when the penetration rate was 10.9%.
“Direct fiber is clearly the preferred access technology for Carrier Ethernet services, as well as for higher speed connectivity to IP VPNs, cloud-based applications and the Internet. Enterprise customers prefer direct fiber due to the benefits of scalability to multi-gigabit speeds plus lower bandwidth costs as compared to other access options,” said Rosemary Cochran, principal at Vertical Systems Group. “The U.S. fiber gap has been steadily closing each year and this trend will continue. A top growth challenge cited by both retail and wholesale network operators is the expansion of their fiber footprints as rapidly as possible to meet customer demand for higher speed services.”
http://www.verticalsystems.com/prarticles/stat-fiber-us-fiber-penetration-2012.html
