What is Fiber Arbitrage?
Fiber arbitrage is the practice of comparing wholesale pricing across multiple carriers (AT&T, Lumen, Zayo, Crown Castle, etc.) to find the best price for connectivity.
Most businesses buy directly from carriers at retail rates. They never see wholesale pricing or compare alternatives.
Result: You're overpaying by 20-40%.
How Fiber Arbitrage Works
Traditional Approach (Retail)
- Call AT&T sales rep
- Get quoted $1,500/month for DIA
- Sign 3-year contract
- Pay retail pricing
SmashByte Approach (Wholesale)
- Tell us your connectivity needs
- We compare AT&T, Lumen, Zayo, Crown Castle
- Get wholesale quotes from all carriers
- Choose best price and quality
Typical savings: 20-40% vs. retail
Real-World Example
100 Mbps DIA circuit in Dallas, TX:
- AT&T retail: $1,200/month (3-year contract)
- Lumen retail: $1,100/month (3-year contract)
- Zayo retail: $1,400/month (3-year contract)
SmashByte wholesale pricing:
- Lumen wholesale: $650/month (month-to-month)
- AT&T wholesale: $720/month (month-to-month)
- Zayo wholesale: $800/month (month-to-month)
Savings: $550/month ($6,600/year)
Why Wholesale is Cheaper
SmashByte has channel partnerships with 300+ carriers worldwide. We buy in bulk and pass savings to customers.
Carriers prefer working with us because:
- We send them high-volume, pre-qualified deals
- We handle customer support
- We reduce their sales overhead
You get wholesale pricing without wholesale minimums.
Beyond Fiber: SIP Trunking
Fiber arbitrage applies to voice too:
Wholesale SIP trunking:
- AT&T: $0.003/min
- Lumen: $0.0025/min
- Verizon: $0.0028/min
vs. retail CPaaS:
- Twilio: $0.0085/min
- Telnyx: $0.004/min
- Bandwidth: $0.006/min
Savings: 30-50% on voice traffic
Multi-Carrier Redundancy
Smart companies use fiber arbitrage for redundancy:
Example: E-commerce company
- Primary: Lumen DIA (wholesale)
- Backup: AT&T DIA (wholesale)
- Automatic failover
- 99.99% uptime
Blended cost: Still 30% cheaper than single retail circuit
Getting Started
SmashByte makes fiber arbitrage simple:
- Tell us your locations and bandwidth needs
- We quote wholesale pricing from all carriers
- You pick best price/performance
- We provision and manage
No markup. No hidden fees. Just transparent wholesale pricing.
Common Questions
Q: Do I need to change providers? A: No. We can often get wholesale pricing on your existing carrier.
Q: What about contracts? A: Many wholesale circuits are month-to-month. No 3-year lock-in.
Q: Is quality the same? A: Yes. Same carriers, same SLAs, same infrastructure.
Q: What's the catch? A: No catch. We make money through small channel commissions from carriers, not markup on your bill.
Why It Works
Most businesses don't have relationships with 300+ carriers. We do.
We've negotiated wholesale pricing across:
- Fiber providers (AT&T, Lumen, Zayo, Crown Castle)
- Colocation (Equinix, Digital Realty, CoreSite)
- Cloud infrastructure (ByteCloud, wholesale GPU)
- Voice/messaging (wholesale SIP, BYOC)
One relationship. Wholesale access to everything.