Verizon Uses Owned Optical Fiber for 48% of its Mobile Site Backhaul

Verizon now says it connects 48 percent of its cell sites using owned optical fiber. That might not seem like such a big deal, but consider that Verizon’s fixed network only reaches about 20 percent of U.S. homes. 

That matters because ownership of a fixed network reaching homes and businesses provides cost advantages for deploying optical fiber backhaul to cell towers and sites. AT&T, in contrast, has fixed network assets passing about 44 percent of U.S. homes. That also provides advantages for cell site backhaul. 

Building fiber backhaul to towers outside the Verizon fixed network territory requires construction or long-term leases of capacity from other providers who can provide the access. It appears that a substantial percentage of Verizon backhaul uses built or owned facilities. 

For U.S. cable operators, who prefer to sell mobile service only to their own existing customer base, the same logic applies. Owning their own landline facilities reduces the cost of creating a cell network. 

Of a total of 140 million homes, AT&T’s landline network passes 62 million. Comcast has (can actually sell service to) about 57 million homes passed.

The Charter Communications network passes about 50 million homes, the number of potential customer locations it can sell to.

Verizon homes passed might number 27 million. Lumen Technologies never reports its homes passed figures, but likely has 20-million or so consumer locations.