Fiber Broadband: Here's What's Been Said in Recent Weeks

With M&As, BEAD, and political shifts, there’s plenty going on in fiber broadband right now.

Here are four quotes that sum up some of the recent highlights in fiber that you need to know about.

1. "…destined to be nearly ubiquitous because the physics says it will win. "

- John Stankey, CEO, AT&T, on fiber

During analyst day, AT&T made it clear it’s leaning hard into fiber, planning to pass over 50 million homes by 2029, and some of those will include their Gigapower open access network. The company also said it’s going to expand its 5G network, where they say they plan to cover 300 million people by 2026.

AT&T also said they plan to retire the majority of their copper landline service by 2029.

“Legacy copper services are no longer meeting our customers’ needs for speed, reliability and always-on connectivity,” said a spokesperson.”

2. "The playing field for broadband service and deployment is often unlevel and skewed in favor of government-owned networks…" 

- Ellis Scherer, ITIF’s research assistant for broadband policy

A report titled “Government-Owned Broadband Networks Are Not Competing on a Level Playing Field” was published by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, or ITIF, a D.C. think tank for public policy.

The report criticized the concept of public broadband networks broadly, taking a hard stance: “In most cases, local governments have neither the competence nor the economies of scale to deliver broadband as well as private ISPs. So, favoring government-owned networks wastes societal resources, creates unfair competition, and is frequently unsustainable in the long run,” the report begins.

It prompted some discussion in the industry from people either in favor of public networks, or skeptical of them. Perhaps most notably was a response from Gigi Sohn, executive director of the American Association for Public Broadband. “Community broadband networks must really be thriving, because yet another organization has put out a paper attacking the ability of a local community to determine its broadband future,” she wrote.

Sohn argued that public broadband plays a role when traditional ISPs are unable or unwilling to provide adequate service. “Communities choose to own their networks because big cable and telecom have refused to provide universal connectivity at affordable prices to their residents,” she wrote.

3. "It’s time to pull the plug."

- U.S. Senator Joni Ernst

Right on the heels of Senator Ted Cruz’s comments in his letter to the NTIA criticizing the BEAD program, another Republican legislator, Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, had her own harsh words about BEAD as part of a letter to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.

Musk and Ramaswamy will be leading the advisory body called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Whether Musk and Ramaswamy will be receptive, who knows. We do know that Musk has been critical of BEAD.

Ernst called out where she believed government funds were being wasted, and highlighted the BEAD program saying, “Three years later, just 17 EV stations are completed and not a single person—not one—has been connected to the Internet yet,” and that “it’s time to pull the plug.”Whether Musk and Ramaswamy will be receptive, who knows. We do know that Musk has been critical of BEAD, though.

4. "The mad scramble to buy fiber businesses will continue."

- Doug Dawson, President, CCG Consulting

Doug Dawson wrote out his predictions in his blog, POTs and PANs, and among his predictions were a continuation of the fiber deals and consolidation we saw in 2024, with big providers seeking territory in North America where they can deploy or own big chunks of the fiber infrastructure that will enable the expected broadband growth and be able to capture subscribers with the best possible technology.

“There is still a glut of investment capital looking for a place to land, and a lot of that money is going to be aimed at buying existing fiber-based ISPs,” wrote Dawson.