Co-Investment Changes FTTH Business Model

For a number of reasons, the business model for telco and cable TV fiber to home is changing. A higher degree of government subsidy support; a desire for investment in FTTH facilities as alternative investment and competitive dynamics in the home broadband industry all mean the business case for FTTH improves. 

As one example,Cable One is part of a joint venture with GTCR LLC,  Stephens Capital Partners, The Pritzker Organization and certain members of the management team to build optical fiber to premises networks by Clearwave Fiber.

Clearwave Fiber holds the assets of Cable One’s subsidiary Clearwave Communications and certain fiber assets of Cable One’s subsidiary Hargray Communications. 

At the same time as capital investment requirements are changing, there is a shift in the assumptions about business model. 

In the late 1990s FTTH was seen as the only viable way for telcos to take market share in the linear video subscription business from cable TV operators. So the revenue upside was subscription video and internet access speeds. To be sure, video arguably was seen as the bigger revenue driver, as late 1990s telco FTTH speeds were in the 10 Mbps range. 

Bundling (triple play or dual-play) also was seen at that time as the way to compensate for competition-induced account losses. While telcos or cable each competing across the voice, business customer, internet access and video entertainment markets might have fewer total accounts, revenue per account from triple-play services would compensate. 

source: S&P Global Market Intelligence 

But something else now seems to have changed. A decade ago, independent internet service providers began to attack the market increasingly based on one service: home broadband. To be sure, many independent ISPs tried a dual-play or triple-play approach for a time. 

But nearly all eventually settled on a home broadband-only approach. Since virtually all independent ISPs face both telco and cable TV competitors, the single-product business model makes some concessions on potential revenue that necessarily must be balanced by lower capital investment and operating costs. 

The latest developments are that such tradeoffs are seen as feasible even for incumbent telcos: in other words, the business model increasingly relies on broadband as the foundation, with some contributions from voice. Video (linear or streaming) plays a lesser or no role in revenue assumptions. 

There are other changes. Subsidies have been rising for broadband deployment, and that also changes the capex requirements. Some of the investment in optical fiber also is helped by the denser optical fiber networks necessary to support 5G networks. Essentially, the payback model is bolstered by the ability to defray some optical media costs from mobile service revenue opportunities. 

Also, 5G supports home broadband using the same transmission facilities as does mobile service, often offering a chance for mobile operators to compete in the home broadband business at relatively low incremental cost. That also helps lower the cost of fixed network FTTH as more revenue is wrung from the installed assets. To the extent that higher revenue produces incrementally higher free cash flow, more capital is available to invest in additional FTTH facilities.

The incremental cost of consumer home broadband is lower once a dense trunking network must be put into place to support small cell mobile networks. 

Also, the value of FTTH facilities has changed as rival investors (institutional investors, private equity) view consumer broadband as a legitimate alternative investment. That boosts the equity value of an FTTH network and supplies new sources of investment. 

Also, the cost of FTTH construction has improved steadily over the past few decades. Also, the expected reduction of operating costs from fiber networks, as opposed to copper networks, now is well attested. So there are opex savings. 

FTTH remains a challenging investment, nonetheless. But it is noteworthy that assumptions about the business model now have changed for incumbent and new providers as well. Where it once was thought an FTTH upgrade virtually required revenue from three services, in an increasing number of cases the investment can be justified based on home broadband alone. 

In greater numbers of cases, the primary value of home broadband is supplemented by some revenues from other sources. But where a triple-play might have produced $130 per month to $200 per month revenues, home broadband might produce $50 to $80 a month. 

That projects increasingly are feasible with a $50 monthly revenue target and adoption around 40 percent to 50 percent shows how much the capex and opex assumptions have changed.