U.S. cable operators will still have 65 percent share of the home broadband market in 2027, analysts at GlobalData predict, despite more fiber-to-home and fixed wireless deployments.
That might sound incongruous--and perhaps it will prove too optimistic--but relative stability in the home broadband market can be explained in a few ways.
Competent competitors with lower cost structures and lower or equivalent costs to upgrade bandwidth--and that will still be the case for cable operators in 2027--should be able to limit share losses, even if competitors equally skilled try to attack them.
The other issue is that upgrading most telco facilities to fiber to home will take time. There is only so much capital that can be put to work; only so much construction capacity; only so much network infrastructure than can be produced in any year.
By Prysmian Group estimates, for example, FTTH will serve only about 26 percent of U.S. households by 2027, and that includes cable ISPs and independent ISPs, not just incumbent telcos. So telco FTTH share will be less than 26 percent in 2027, if Prysmian proves correct.
source: S&P Global Intelligence
In fact, other analysts at S&P Global Intelligence think FTTH share of home broadband (again including telcos and other competing ISPs) will only reach about 17 percent by 2025.
As cable industry executives have pointed out for quite some time, the amount of new FTTH infrastructure that can be deployed by telcos--for reasons of capital limitations, market opportunity or other choice--is limited.
It takes time to build out a new ubiquitous access infrastructure in a continent-sized country. Also, as cable operators themselves start to deploy FTTH, it will be increasingly necessary to delineate market shares by type of competitor, not choice of physical media.
Telco FTTH is not going to move the market share needle as much as some might hope.
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