Frontier: 1 Gig Ethernet requests up 60 percent over 2014

Frontier Communications is seeing more retail small and medium business (SMB) customers starting to migrate to 1 Gbps Ethernet connections, with requests increasing by 60 percent over 2014.

Lisa Partridge, senior manager of data market management for Frontier, said that customers that were traditionally satisfied with 20-50 Mbps now want 1 Gbps Ethernet connections. "Where we're really starting to see the uptake is on the small medium business and enterprise side," Partridge said. "For a while, 20-50 Mbps was their comfort zone or sweet spot; however, in the last six months it has really taken a swing for the Gig." A large swath of vertical segments are looking for Gigabit-based Ethernet services from Frontier, including everything financial and healthcare segments. Given the amount of compliance healthcare companies have to abide by like the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), they are actually asking for 10G and above.