AT&T retained the top spot for the seventh consecutive year on Vertical Systems Group’s (VSG) year-end U.S. Fiber-Lit Buildings Leaderboard.

These 12 retail and wholesale fiber providers that qualified had 15,000 or more on-net U.S. fiber-lit commercial buildings as of the end of 2022. Following AT&T in order are Verizon, Spectrum Enterprise, Lumen Technologies, Comcast Business, Cox Business, Zayo, Crown Castle, Frontier Communications, Brightspeed, Breezeline and Optimum.

Rankings for the top six are unchanged from 2021. The next six changed somewhat compared to the previous year. Zayo advanced to seventh ahead of Crown Castle, which dipped to eighth.

Frontier moved up to ninth position from 10th. Brightspeed debuts in 10th with fiber assets acquired from Lumen. Breezeline, formerly Atlantic Broadband, falls to 11th position from ninth. Optimum (Altice USA brand) drops from 11th to the 12th and final position.

Fiber-Lit Buildings Increased in 2022

“Fiber installations at U.S. commercial sites increased in 2022, driven by escalating requirements for gigabit-speed connectivity to support cloud-based services, data centers, 5G rollouts and other applications,” said Rosemary Cochran, principal of Vertical Systems Group. “New fiber investments in the United States will continue to be impacted by pending federal programs and funding initiatives. Opportunities in the commercial segment include monetizing the millions of small buildings underserved.”

The Challenge tier grew from eight to nine with the addition of Ritter Communications. Others include Altafiber (formerly Cincinnati Bell), Consolidated Communications, FirstLight, Great Plains Communications, Segra, Unite Private Networks, Uniti Fiber and Windstream. These fiber providers had between 5,000 and 15,000 U.S. fiber-lit commercial buildings.

The Market Player tier includes all other fiber providers with fewer than 2,000 U.S. commercial fiber-lit buildings. It features such companies as 11:11 Systems, Cogent, Fusion Connect, Google Fiber, GTT, Logix Fiber Networks, T-Mobile, TPx and Ziply Fiber.