Fiber Will Capture a Third of North American Broadband Market in 2029: Dell'Oro
By the end of 2029, fiber operators will own about 33% of the North American broadband market, with cable's share slipping from roughly 62% today to about 53%, according to Jeff Heynen, Dell’Oro Group vice president-broadband access and home networking.…
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In a Fiber Broadband Association webinar Wednesday, Heynen said fixed wireless access's market share will likely peak at around 13%. He said fixed wireless subscriber growth will probably top off in 2026 and then start to moderate. Low earth orbit broadband will ultimately capture 2%-4% of subscribers, Heynen said, and cable DOCSIS 4.0 upgrades have slowed somewhat, in part because of component availability issues. Last year was tough for network equipment vendors, as operators were still working off overly large inventories from 2022 and 2023, perhaps due to too-aggressive purchasing. Heynen said broadband providers were largely working off excess inventory in 2024, and purchasing is returning to normal. Purchases of passive optical networks' optical line termination ports were down 40% in 2024, while cable providers' buys of DOCSIS customer premises equipment were down 23%.