Home Broadband Subscriber Additions to Slow Again in 2025: Analyst
Expect another year of declining net additions of broadband subscribers, Wolfe Research analyst Peter Supino said Wednesday in a Fiber Broadband Association webinar. Net adds by fiber, cable and DSL were around 2.5 million in 2023 and 2.2 million last year, and will likely be fewer than 2 million this year, he said. While cable's lost broadband subscribers are often attributed to fiber and fixed wireless access competition, they might actually be due to incumbents feeling most acutely those declining net additions, he said. Cable has clearly lost its residential broadband monopoly, with close to two-thirds of households having fiber operator options alongside cable, Supino said. In five years, 75%-80% of households will have the choice of fiber and cable, he noted. Traditionally, cable saw its broadband subscriber numbers grow as the number of homes its network passed increased. Since broadband subscriber numbers are no longer growing in lockstep with number of homes its network passes, cable becomes more capital intensive, he said.
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AT&T's plans to have fiber running to more 50 million locations by 2029 as it retires its wireline copper network was "a very bullish signal" about expected returns not just from selling fiber service but fiber's impact on AT&T's overall business, Supino said. The one area where fiber is seemingly on the defensive is BEAD.
Fiber Broadband Association President Gary Bolton said Congress is indicating that the interest in redoing BEAD requirements without the heavy emphasis on fiber is not about pushing alternatives to fiber but letting market forces drive decisions. He said state broadband offices remain committed to wanting to deploy fiber.
Supino said using low earth orbit satellites in BEAD raises questions about LEO's long-term costs. While the initial cash outlay is a lot cheaper than installing fiber, the lifespan of the hardware is a lot shorter, he said. Bolton said SpaceX's Starlink system will face capacity issues that will limit how many U.S. subscribers it can support, even with a larger constellation of next-generation satellites.