The more buildings, towers and data centers that are served, and the more consumers and residences that exist along the way, the more potential for multiple revenue streams there is. For example, AT&T's initiative around GPON dedicated and broadband services in metropolitan areas is helping help it expand the number of not only larger enterprise customers, but smaller businesses and residences along the way. "We are adding as many as 5,000 locations per month, picking up more subscribers per building location,” says Boza, talking about the benefits of putting in new fiber for dedicated services, like MPLS or dedicated Internet. "Then we can offer shared services, which means other businesses get higher speeds. And, if we offer Gigapower to residences, it can be as many as 15,000 new locations per month.”

Increasingly, business customers want affordable high-speed connectivity, but not all of them can afford dedicated connections, which is pushing sales teams to look at accounts in terms of entire geographies as opposed to singular locations. By looking at multiple locations at once, as opposed to on a one-off basis, CSPs can better evolve to balance networking needs with budgets. "When there are shared services and hybrid networking within a site, customers have more flexibility to tailor services to different needs," explains Boza. "They may choose to have a dedicated connection for mission-critical traffic like voice, video and point-of-sale transactions with SLAs, but a broadband Internet connection for Internet traffic offload, guest-facing WiFi and non-mission-critical traffic like web surfing."

Like AT&T, most LECs have negotiated directly with each other and with other providers within the wholesale ecosystem for more aggressive Ethernet access pricing and more scalability at affordable prices.

As that happens, carriers continue to improve on the competitive pricing and service plans they offer in their competition with each other and with cable MSOs. The aforementioned J.D. Powers study from 2016 found that CSPs like Verizon and AT&T continue to lead in broadband subscriber gains, with scale, relationships and brand perception as some of the variables driving CSP success in the enterprise market.

When it comes to on-net fiber in business buildings, Vertical Systems Group (VSG) revealed in its new "U.S. Fiber Lit Buildings LEADERBOARD report" that 11 service providers have the largest presence. The research focused on retail and wholesale fiber providers with 10,000 or more on-net fiber-lit commercial buildings in the United States. VSG has found that the number of buildings with available fiber jumped to 49.6 percent in 2016 (significant, since in 2004, less than 11 percent of commercial buildings in the United States were connected to fiber).

The Role of Fiber on the World Stage

While the United States can boast the highest number of fixed and mobile broadband subscriptions in the world, fiber-optic broadband only accounts for 7.7 percent of internet connections in the United States, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The organization noted a surge of 290 percent in Mexican fiber-optic internet connections, with the U.S. market expanding 12 percent during the same year.