AT&T, Colt Top Latest Global Ethernet Provider Rankings

Written by Edward Gately
September 18, 2020

Several big-name providers in the channel are in the top seven.

AT&T and Colt retained the top two spots on Vertical Systems Group’s (VSG) midyear 2020 Global Provider Ethernet Services Leaderboard.

Following Colt and rounding out the top seven are CenturyLink, Orange, BT Global, Verizon and NTT.

This week CenturyLink rebranded its enterprise business to Lumen Technologies.

AT&T has held the top spot continuously since mid-2018. Orange and BT have switched positions since the mid-year 2019 global Ethernet leaderboard.

VSG calls its leaderboard the industry’s benchmark for multinational Ethernet network market presence, ranking companies that hold a 4 percent or higher share of billable retail ports at sites outside of their respective home countries.

Impact of Pandemic

“Global network expansion came to a standstill in the first half of the year as remote offices and plants shut down in many countries due to the coronavirus,” said Rick Malone, VSG’s principal. “Ethernet providers instead focused on ramping up bandwidth for their multinational customers as they turned to cloud and internet services for mission critical applications.”

The top five companies are separated by just two share points. Due to COVID-19, the market base for mid-2020 port share calculations contracted as compared to year-end 2019.

The pandemic interrupted Ethernet business in all regions of the world. The countries hit hardest include Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and Brazil.

CenturyLink and Orange Business are the only companies on the leaderboard that have attained MEF 3.0 Carrier Ethernet (MEF 3.0 CE) certification. It’s a market differentiator for Ethernet providers worldwide.

CenturyLink employs the highest number of MEF Carrier Ethernet Certified Professionals (MEFProCert) across all leaderboard companies.

Cogent, Global Cloud Xchange, GTT, SingTel, T-Systems, Tata Communications, Telefonica Worldwide and Vodafone ranked in the Challenge tier. It includes companies with between 2% and 4% share.

The Market tier includes such companies as Masergy, Sprint (now part of T-Mobile) and Zayo. It includes companies with less than 2% share.