Orange Business Services, the business services arm of France Telecom, continues to dominate the global Ethernet services market in terms of port shares, as seen in Vertical Systems Group's mid-2012 global provider Ethernet Leaderboard, according FierceTelecom. The French service provider's ongoing dedication to building out fiber and its global network in key markets including both Asia Pacific and Latin America have helped it maintain its dominance in the global Ethernet market. Complementing its own network buildouts, the service provider continues to work with various External-Network to Network Interconnection (E-NNI) service partners in all of the regions where it provides service. Coming right behind Orange Business were both Verizon and Colt, which continued to hold onto their No. 2 and 3 rankings on the global Leaderboard.
Like Orange, the key factor of Verizon and Colt's global Ethernet growth has been their ongoing expansion drives into Europe and Asia Pacific. Colt recently lit a low latency network between London and Ireland, while Verizon upgraded its global Private IP network to meet global growth needs and began the process of upgrading key metro network routes to 100 G.
Another notable shift in the global rankings was that BT Global Services (NYSE: BT), which previously held the seventh spot in the ranking put out in March, moved into the No. 4 spot. Throughout 2011 and 2012, the service provider has been continually expanding its Ethernet and overall network presence in various international countries throughout 2011, including Asia Pacific, EMEA, Latin America and the U.S.
As of the middle of this year, the top seven global Ethernet providers ranked based on port share were: Orange Business Services (France), Verizon (U.S.), Colt (U.K.), BT Global Services (U.K.), AT&T (NYSE: T) (U.S.), NTT (NYSE: NTT) (Japan) and Level 3 (NYSE: LVLT) (U.S.).
Rick Malone, principal at Vertical Systems Group, confirmed that the ongoing expansions into the APAC, EMEA, Latin America and the Mid-East had an impact in during this period.
"Global providers that actively expanded their Ethernet service reach into Latin America, southern Asia and the Middle East were least impacted by the slowdown in Europe, and therefore fared better at retaining market share," he said.
