U.S. Home Fiber Deployments Set a New Record of 10.3M homes 

U.S. Home Fiber Deployments Set a New Record of 10.3M homes

As the year closes, holiday decorations go up and the latest fiber broadband statistics are compiled. RVA Market Research presented a preview of its 2024 fiber deployment numbers, with the year setting a record with 10.3 million U.S. homes passed. Fiber broadband now passes 76.5 million unique U.S. homes with continued growth expected over the next five years. 

“We had good growth in 2024, 13%,” said Mike Render, Founder & CEO, RVA LLC. “We’re now at 35 million homes connected, and that’s growing well. Take rates are holding up.”  

Fiber take rates increased slightly, even during the heavy building period this year, growing to an average take rate of over 45%, based on unique passing. Providers are reporting they are now getting to their first 20% take rate in a much faster period as well as reaching higher take rates over time. 

Render declared the fiber industry’s inventory issues generated by COVID-era stockpiling now resolved with the average month of inventory estimates steadily going down across a six-month period and those trends are projected to continue into 2025, especially given the expected construction over the next five years.  

“Looking at the addressable market, there’s still a lot of market left to go,” said Render. “It’s not like we’re three years away from finishing this job. First, households increase every year. The next decade we’re looking at a conservative 1 million households increase per year. There’s still a lot of initial passings out there [to be made], both in the dense low-income area, denser high-income aeras, small towns, rural, and of course, second homes… It may be as much as 150 million or more still to go. Still plenty of room for growth.”  

Fiber-to-the-home’s main competition is “starting to bleed,” said Render, with its numbers down 33% in markets where fiber is available. RVA does not believe the arrival of DOCSIS 4.0 will stop HFC’s continued decline in the marketplace. Instead, cable will continue to see migration of customers to fiber as well as cable providers replacing their legacy plant with fiber. 

A future of continued fiber construction is expected to continue over the next five years. 

“Where are we going?” said Render. “Money is flowing, a lot of money from private equity, a cumulative $80 billion over the last five years. Mergers and acquisitions, even companies from Canada coming in and buying [U.S. service providers.] CapEx reinvestment, $96 billion over the next few years, which is higher than the average over the last 20 years.”  

In addition, Render citied the past and current investment commitments of public funds, including the disbursement of $42 billion of BEAD money starting to flow, providing continued and sustained growth. While RVA sees some potential of annual FTTH deployments peaking due to labor constraints, there are numerous other areas for fiber growth, ranging from deployments supporting quantum networking to autonomous vehicle deployments. 

For more insights into how well fiber has done in 2024 as well its bright future in the years to come, listen to the latest Fiber for Breakfast.

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