As Birch Communications enhances its network reach through its own builds and working with a series of interconnection partners, the service provider is setting a foundation to grow its Ethernet services business.
A key focus for Birch has been on expanding its fiber footprint. The service provider set a goal to gain a fiber presence in 1 million buildings. To get there Birch is taking a two-pronged approach that includes building out its own fiber and purchasing long-term fiber indefeasible rights of use (IRUs) from other network partners.
The service provider currently reaches over 400,000 buildings. As part of that process it added 80,000 buildings across its 22-state footprint.
Like other service providers, Birch sees the advent of Ethernet to serve as enabler for other services like cloud and VPN.
David Gibson, VP of business development for Birch Communications, told FierceTelecom that it is rapidly increasing the orders it has with one of its newest carrier partners.
"Ethernet is growing, but I want it to grow faster," Gibson said. "I was looking at some numbers and for one particular carrier, we're going to triple the orders from last month and we just released that carrier into the sales channel just four or five months ago."
While he could not specify specific numbers, Gibson said that its second quarter Ethernet sales will surpass what it saw in the first quarter.
"We continue to see it increase," Gibson said. "Now it's about how do we accelerate it and how do we add more partners into the mix and more speeds and feeds."
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