Fiber Lit Buildings

Rob Powell has an update to his fiber list on Telecom Ramblings blog. What is interesting about the chart is that TWT and L3 have about the same number of route miles - 26,000 - but TWT has way more buildings lit that Level3. TWT has 10,700 buildings lit and L3 has about 7550. TWT lights about 250 per quarter. That's an impressive number. I wonder how TWT does that because 250 buildings times $7000 minimum build comes to $1.75M per quarter of CAPEX.

I also wonder how much overlap there is in lit buildings. For instance, much of XO's fiber is an IRU on L3, so likely they have a lot of overlap on lit buildings. Cogent is mainly in telecom hotels so that is a redundant lit building. (It's rare that just Cogent is in a building).

I also wonder how TWT can sell 250 new buildings per quarter, since their channel is not as active as Level3's. Maybe they have a highly motivated sales force that is told where to sell (as close to the fiber route as possible).

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November 17, 2008 11:36 AM |