Though service providers have spent billions deploying fiber to enterprise and large business customers who consume (and can afford) massive amounts of bandwidth, the SMBs are still lacking.

In fact, the latest research by Vertical Systems Group (www.verticalsystems.com) tells of fiber-deprivation for SMBs. While fiber penetration into U.S.-based buildings has increased in recent years, the report recently conducted by Vertical Systems Group revealed that only 27.7 percent of U.S.-based buildings have fiber, meaning that the remaining 72 percent don’t have fiber in their buildings yet.

One tactic providers are using to serve those deprived customers is Ethernet over Copper (EoC). Once thought of as a small niche product, EoC allows service providers to leverage the near-ubiquitous copper plant.

Interestingly, several competitive providers have been deploying this strategy in the footprints. These players include PAETEC, Integra Telecom, MegaPath, TelePacific, and XO Communications.

With pair bonding, NxT1 bonding, VDSL2 and vectoring, data rates delivered over copper are rising. In fact, EoC may be the solution for a growing audience of businesses that demand a medium that allows them to scale bandwidth more flexibly than purchasing more expensive T1 circuits beyond 1.5 Mbps.

Vertical Systems Group (www.verticalsystems.com) is recognized worldwide as a leading market research and strategic consulting firm specializing in defensible quantification of the networking industry.

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