Dedicated Access Versus Shared Fiber Versus Fixed Wireless: The Enterprise Perspective

This IDC Perspective discusses dedicated access versus shared fiber versus fixed wireless. Today's enterprises face the continued challenge of aligning network capacity to the growing data demands of the organization. With more than 30% of enterprises worldwide seeing bandwidth requirements grow by more than 50% over the last year, aligning network access with evolving business needs remains a top challenge for network and IT leaders."Currently, North American enterprises have a larger share of broadband or shared fiber usage compared with EMEA-based or APAC-based enterprises, driven in part by cost and almost equivalent levels or performance. EMEA-based businesses show larger share of high-speed dedicated fiber usage," said Paul Hughes, research director for IDC's Future of Connectedness agenda program. "Fixed wireless access is used by more than half of EMEA and APAC enterprises today to provide connectivity resiliency on top of existing wireline connectivity, and looking ahead, we expect enterprises to leverage wireless technologies across both the licensed and unlicensed spectrum as a key priority of their connectivity transformation."