Friday, March 12, 2021

The FTTH Sustainability Issue, as AT&T Faces It

This slide from AT&T’s analyst and investor day presentation March 12, 2021 illustrates the practical issues new fiber-to-home investments present. Average revenue per customer is about $58 a month. 


Take rates are about 34 percent. In other words, where FTTH is available, about a third of customers buy it. In many competitive markets, that is about as low market share can be and still provide any financial return at all. 


source: AT&T 


If we assume the existing locations are the most favorable, in terms of potential return, we might also assume that the business case could well be worse as less-desirable areas are added. That suggests a rather controlled expansion of FTTH by AT&T, as it must expect to build a network that strands two thirds of the access network investment.


No comments:

Two Language Model Cases Decided This Week Bear on "Fair Use" of Copyrighted Material for Training

In the second of two “fair use” court cases involving language model training this week, a court has ruled that Meta did not infringe copyr...