Orange Business and BT (NYSE: BT) continued to hold on to their top spots in Vertical Systems Group's Ethernet Leaderboard due to continually broadening their reach and fiber footprint into more locations to satisfy multinational corporation needs.
Service providers increased their global Ethernet port deployments, particularly outside of their home market, as more multinational corporations upgraded their network circuits from legacy TDM-based T-1 access services to Ethernet.
"Global providers increased their 'out of home market' Ethernet port deployments by 15% in 2014 as enterprises expanded their multinational networks to new locations and upgraded legacy sites with higher speed Ethernet access," said Rick Malone, principal at Vertical Systems Group.
Malone added that the common criteria that multinational corporations look for in considering any Ethernet provider are the depth and reach of their service and fiber footprint.
"Large enterprises cite service reach and fiber footprint coverage as the top criteria for their global Ethernet purchase decisions," Malone said.
Trailing BT and Orange in terms of port shares sold were Verizon (NYSE: VZ), Colt, AT&T (NYSE: T), Level 3 and NTT Communications.
In addition to these top five carriers, VSG said that there are seven companies that made the "Challenge Tier," which includes those that have share between 2 and 4 percent of this defined market: Cogent, Global Cloud Xchange [formerly Reliance Globalcom], SingTel, T-Systems, Tata Communications, Telefonica Worldwide and Vodafone.
For more:
- see the release
Related articles:
VSG: Level 3's tw telecom acquisition helps it surpass Verizon in Ethernet race
VSG: 1M carrier Ethernet ports will be in service by 2018
Orange Business taps into hybrid cloud opportunity with VPN offering