The geographic coverage of carriers’ enterprise network services varies significantly.
Not every carrier connects to every city in their customers’ networks, and not all services are available everywhere.
When narrowing down the universe of potential suppliers, enterprises must first consider how their geographic requirements overlap a potential service provider’s physical network. They then must determine if the specific data services they require are enabled at each of the service providers’ PoPs.
The WAN Services Coverage analysis—one section of our Cloud and WAN Research—examines carrier network connectivity and service availability from a geographic perspective.
Keep reading for a sneak peek of our latest findings.
Global Business Center Product Comparison
Layer 3 MPLS IP VPN remains the most common enterprise-wide area network product across the key 165 business center metros. In these metro areas, carriers offer over 3,000 offerings of this service.
Number of Offerings of Eight Enterprise Products across 165 Key Business Centers
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Notes: Total number of offerings that participating carriers indicated they could offer each of the listed eight services in 165 business centers. Data as of Q4 2023. Source: © 2024 TeleGeography
Ethernet over MPLS is the second most common service in these locations, with over 2,600 offerings, and DIA is third, with over 2,300 offerings. EVPN is offered over 2,000 times in these metros, and DWDM is offered over 1,700 times.
Product Geographic Comparison
Each of these five enterprise products (plus SDH, EoSDH, and T-E services) are most widely available in Europe, followed by the U.S. and Canada, and then Asia.
Number of Offerings of Top Services by Region in Key Metros
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Notes: Each bar represents the total number of sites for each product across 165 key business centers. Data as of Q4 2023. Source: © 2024 TeleGeography
Global Business Center Provider Comparison
When sourcing a WAN, enterprises can keep it simple by relying on one primary global service provider, or they can work with many carriers to get the lowest prices in each region.
In fact, according to our most recent WAN Manager Survey, a healthy minority—27%—of companies sourced their MPLS from a single global provider.
According to our most recent WAN Manager Survey, a healthy minority—27%—of companies sourced their MPLS from a single global provider.
A far smaller share—15%—source their DIA from a single provider.
Enterprises should therefore have a strong command of the provider landscape in different regions of the world. This is part of the reasoning behind this report’s expansion beyond the original 165 metros to include all carrier locations.
It is also useful to understand which carriers can cover the key global business centers where the vast majority of global offices are located.
Top International Service Providers by Number of IP VPN Metros Within 165 Key Global Business Centers
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Notes: Each bar represents the number of cities among the key 165 business center metros in which the listed carrier can offer IP VPN. Data as of Q4 2023. Source: © 2024 TeleGeography
BT is the most widespread IP VPN provider across the 165 business centers, covering more than 110 metros.
The remainder of the top ten includes a roster of well known providers: Verizon, Orange Business Services, AT&T, Vodafone, etc.
This analysis was pulled from our newly updated Cloud and WAN Research Service. Download the free executive summary to keep reading.
Greg Bryan
Greg is Senior Manager, Enterprise Research at TeleGeography. He's spent the last decade and a half at TeleGeography developing many of our pricing products and reports about enterprise networks. He is a frequent speaker at conferences about corporate wide area networks and enterprise telecom services. He also hosts our podcast, TeleGeography Explains the Internet.