U.S. FTTH Payback Model is Changing

This chart showing AT&T fixed network average revenue per user for AT&T consumer connections might surprise you. 

At the end of 2020, the chart shows, AT&T had about 14 million broadband customer accounts in service and had some five million FTTH connections. 

That might be low. AT&T itself reported it had 5.5 million FTTH accounts in service at the end of the third quarter of 2021.  

Other estimates for the same period suggest AT&T FTTH passed 15.5 million home locations in late October of 2020. “Passings” mean a customer can buy. AT&T says it had a take rate for FTTH passings of 34 percent in 2020. 

In 2021 take rates seem to have climbed, and might have reached 37 percent.  

source: Digtl Infra 

Keep in mind that AT&T had about 57 million total homes passed in its fixed network footprint in 2021. Even if AT&T spends less than $1375 per active account location, and perhaps in the $500 to $600 range for passing (but not activating) a home, the payback model almost certainly has to rely on a number of subtleties.

In some cases, AT&T may already have usable fiber-to-node facilities in place, which should reduce the cost of extending fiber to the home. It is possible that in some locations government subsidies could amount to perhaps $300 per line. 

But some of the financial value also has to be attributed to enterprise, small business and small cell deployments that can use much of the same distribution fiber. Presumably some of the payback will come from lower operating expense as well. 

Still, with overall ARPU for combined copper, FTTN and FTTH facilities at just $58 a month, once has to assume some amount of voice and video entertainment revenue is involved. 

At a high level, AT&T has been saying FTTH payback models work at $50 a month ARPU and penetration of 50 percent. 

If one assumes that the mainstay has to be home broadband, with average household broadband spending of about $40 to $50 a month, with digital subscriber line unsustainable longer term at about $40 a month, then one is almost forced to assume that a substantial portion of AT&T’s FTTH revenues (stand alone, with zero voice or video contribution) will be closer to $60 a month. 

AT&T FTTH charges for 300 Mbps service already are at $55 a month (ignoring taxes). Service at 500 Mbps costs $65 a month and 1-Gbps service retails for $80 a month.  

Even assuming every FTTH customer only buys service at 300 Mbps (more than half of all U.S. homes buy service between 100 Mbps and 200 Mbps), revenue with zero contribution from voice or video would be above $50 a month.