Fiber to Home No Longer is the Key Metric: Gigabit Access Is the Issue, and Pessimism is Completely Unwarranted

Vern Fotheringham, V-Satcast executive chairman, asked an interesting question at the Pacific Telecommunications Council’s 2016 annual conference: “what percentage of U.S. homes now are connected to by fiber?” Eventually answering his own question, he said “five percent.”

As with all such figures, context is required. The Fiber to the Home Council estimated in 2015 that 26 million U.S. homes were passed by fiber-to-home connections and could buy service. If there are 134 million U.S. homes, then perhaps 19 percent of U.S. homes are passed by fiber to the home networks and are able to buy service.

As always, though, the issue is not where we are, but where we are going, and there the FTTH statistics do not tell the story. FTTH is one method of providing very high speed Internet access. But it is not the only way.

Cable TV networks able to provide gigabit service would, for many, be a functional substitute for FTTH access.

Also, the issue is the impact of new fiber providers such as Google Fiber, as well as stepped-up gigabit programs by AT&T. The way some of us would frame the issue is the percentage of homes able to buy gigabit service, not the number using a specific access technology.

That paints a different picture. With the commercialization of Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS 3.1) platforms, cable operators can upgrade Internet access speeds up to 10 gigabits per second by means of a software change to modems and routers.

The DOCSIS 3.1 platform supports speeds up to 10 Gbps, depending on how much bandwidth a cable operator wishes to devote for that purpose.

Comcast, for example, already has announced it will upgrade its entire consumer high speed access base (both customers and passings) to gigabit speeds using DOCSIS 3.1. Comcast originally believed it might do so in 2015 or 2016. It now has said that could happen, nationwide, by 2018.

Make no mistake: that will change the picture dramatically. Comcast has shown it can increase high speed access speeds at Moore's Law rates. Comcast passes 54 million U.S. homes. So once the gigabit upgrade is completed, Comcast alone will represent gigabit coverage of 40 percent of U.S. homes.

Cox's consumer gigabit service will be available in all of its markets by the end of 2016. Cox passes 9.2 million U.S. homes. That adds another seven percent.

So Comcast and Cox alone will pass 47 percent of U.S. homes, with unduplicated gigabit coverage.

Assume Charter’s acquisition of Time Warner is approved by regulators. Time Warner passes 30 million homes. That is 22 percent of homes. So Comcast, Time Warner and Cox eventually will provide gigabit access to an unduplicated 69 percent of U.S. homes.

Telcos are moving as well.

Separately, CenturyLink is deploying gigabit access as well, though those locations will overlap with some of the Comcast and other cable operator homes.

AT&T is expanding its GigaPower service to parts of 38 more cities. It's now in 56 metro markets.

AT&T's GigaPower service now reaches one million addresses, with plans to double that in 2016 and ultimately reach 14 million homes and businesses, Goldman Sachs said in a research report.

MoffettNathanson, for its part, says AT&T has committed to expanding its fiber-optic service to 5 million "customer locations" by the end of 2017, 8.3 million by year-end 2018 and 12.5 million through July 24, 2019, as part of conditions tied to the approval of its DirecTV acquisition. Based on regulatory definitions, MoffettNathanson contends the 14 million "locations" will translate to 9.9 million "cable equivalent" homes and businesses, or 7.3 percent of U.S. households.

Google Fiber is on a path to serve Chicago and Los Angeles, as well as the 4.3 million or so homes it already could potentially reach with its already-announced deployments of gigabit service.

The point is that the present and coming competitive market business model for high speed access will change dramatically over the next several years. Where we are does not matter. Where we are going matters.

Fiber to the home availability is not the metric you want to watch. Watch for gigabit access to become the dominant and normal advertised speed across most locations cable can reach. And keep in mind, cable reaches 98 percent of all U.S. homes.

Soon, cable alone will potentially reach 70 percent of U.S. homes, with Google Fiber and telcos offering a second provider option across some of that cable footprint.

Fiber to the home passings do not tell the real story.

U.S. Fixed Network Homes Passed Now Increasingly is Guesswork

With the caveat that there are wide areas of the United States where population density is exceedingly low, no single fixed network service provider has a geographic footprint that covers “most” of the landmass.

Here is Comcast:

source: Comcast

Here is AT&T:

source: AT&T

Here is Verizon:

source: Verizon

Here is CenturyLink:

source: Wikimedia

Here is Charter Communications:

source: Value Ventures

Of course, many will note that what really matters is not landmass but potential customer locations, such as homes and businesses. 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. Comcast has (can actually sell service to ) about 57 million homes passed.

AT&T’s fixed network represents perhaps 62 million U.S. homes passed. CenturyLink never reports its homes passed figures, but likely has 20-million or so consumer locations it can market services to.

FTTH or Time Warner? It Is Not a Close Call

Would AT&T have generated more incremental revenue if it had not bought Time Warner, and instead had plowed that capital into a massive fiber to home upgrade?

The numbers suggest AT&T made a better choice buying Time Warner.

AT&T spent $85 billion to acquire Time Warner, with an immediate quarterly revenue boost of $8.2 billion. Were AT&T able to invest in fiber to home and then take an incremental five percent share of market everywhere it operates, is perhaps $2.2 billion in annual revenues, assuming $50 a month in gross revenue, or about $180 million a month in incremental revenue.

It is not clear how much upside exists for AT&T, in terms of fixed network internet access revenue, even if it were to dramatically extend its FTTH footprint, but you might argue that the best case for AT&T, for a massive upgrade of its consumer access network, is about 10 percent upside in terms of consumer market share, facing cable operators already leading the market in accounts and speed, with a clear road map for additional speed increases that easily match anything AT&T might propose, and arguably at less cost.

So here’s one take on the alternatives of buying Time Warner or using that capital instead to expand the AT&T FTTH profile. Consider the incremental revenue generated from each alternative.

Assume first that U.S. telcos could take 10 percent more market share from cable TV suppliers. Incremental revenue might then be less than $4.4 billion annually. Consider that AT&T has footprint covering perhaps 69 percent of U.S. homes. So make the incremental revenue for AT&T $3 billion, or $250 million per month.

Also, it would take some years before that degree of new FTTH assets could be put into place. Over any three-month period, AT&T might expect incremental revenue ranging from $540 million to $750 million per quarter, the former figure representing five percent share gain, the latter representing 10 percent share gain.

Neither comes close to the $8.2 billion per quarter AT&T picked up from the Time Warner acquisition.

Verizon has different strategic issues, compared to its main fixed network competitors.

Significantly, Verizon has a small geographic footprint, compared to any of its main fixed network competitors. Verizon homes passed might number 27 million. Comcast has (can actually sell service to ) about 57 million homes passed. Charter Communications has some 50 million homes passed.

AT&T’s fixed network represents perhaps 62 million U.S. homes passed.

Assume there are 138.6 million U.S. housing units, of which perhap 92 percent are occupied (including roughly seven to eight percent of rental units and two percent of homes). That suggests a potential base of 128 million housing units, including rooms rented in homes or apartments, that could buy services from a fixed network supplier.

That implies Verizon has the ability to sell to about 21 percent of homes; Comcast can sell to 45 percent; AT&T can market to 48 percent of occupied homes; while Charter can sell to 39 percent of U.S. occupied homes.

The point is that Verizon has more to gain than AT&T, Comcast or Charter from investing in internet access outside its traditional geography.

In principle, Verizon faces the same issue as does AT&T when weighing alternative uses of scarce capital.

As it deploys 5G fixed wireless, there are two key issues: how much market share and revenue can Verizon gain, and what else might Verizon have done with its investment capital? It all depends on one’s assumptions.

Some argue that, over seven years, Verizon might gain only 11 percent to 18 percent share in markets where it can sell 5G fixed wireless. Verizon believes it will do better, and some believe a 20-percent share is feasible. Verizon itself predicts it can get about 23 percent share, as a minimum, over seven years, representing about 6.3 million accounts.

Assume Verizon fixed wireless gross revenue is about $60 per account (a blend of the $50 from Verizon mobile customers and $70 from non-customers). Assume annual revenue of perhaps $720.

Assume Verizon spends about $800 per location on 5G fixed wireless infrastructure (radios, backhaul, spectrum costs), even if those same assets can be used to support other users and applications.

At 20 percent take rates, that implies a per-subscriber network cost of perhaps $4000.

Assume a cost of perhaps $300, over time,  to turn up service to accounts. That implies a rough break even in months. Assume total capex investment of perhaps $4300 per account. At $720 annual revenue, that implies breakeven on invested capital in six years.

But assume half the cost of the capital investment also supports revenue generation from other users and use cases (mobility, business users, internet of things). In that case the fixed wireless capex is perhaps $$2150 per customer, and breakeven on capex is a bit more than three years, assuming the only revenue upside is internet access revenue.

Logically, one would have to add churn reduction in some cases, and so the lifetime value of a customer; incremental advertising opportunities; some possible upside from voice services or wholesale revenue. None of that is easy to quantify with precision.

The point is that potential return might fall well within a framework of payback in three years.

Whether that is a “good” investment or not depends on what else might have been generated from other capital deployments.

Over a seven-year period, Verizon might have committed $13 billion in capex to generate revenue from six million fixed wireless accounts (about $1.85 billion per year). It is hard to image any alternative use of capital at that level that would result in annual revenues of $4.3 billion in internet access revenues alone.

It is in fact quite hard to create a brand new business generating as much as $1 billion a year in incremental revenues, under the best of conditions.

source: ITU

So, back to the importance of video revenues, as difficult as the Time Warner debt burden might be, the renamed Warner Media already generates $32 billion in annual incremental new revenue for AT&T. Virtually nobody other than its competitors is likely happy about the new $55 billion worth of new debt AT&T has acquired.

Still, the issue is what else AT&T could have done with $55 billion that would immediately create $32 billion in new revenues. Personally, I cannot think of another transaction that would have produced that much new revenue, immediately.

AT&T could have spent that money on fiber to home upgrades, to perhaps gain five percent to 10 percent additional market share in the consumer internet access market, in region, over perhaps five to seven years. The upside, even at 10 percent share gain, does not approach the Warner Media contribution.

How Much Does Fixed Wireless Matter?

You can get a robust debate pretty quickly when asking “how important will 5G fixed wireless be?” in the consumer home broadband market. Will it matter? 

Probably. But it also matters more to some than to others, and will matter even if the net result is installed base market share shifts of just a few percentage points. So there is no actual contraction between cable operators saying “fixed wireless is not a threat” and a few firms arguing it will be highly significant as a driver of revenues. 

Keep in mind that the home broadband market generates $195 billion worth of annual revenue. Comcast and Charter Communications alone book $150 billion annually from internet access services that largely are generated by home broadband customers. 

T-Mobile has zero market share in that market. Taking just two percent means new revenues of perhaps $4 billion annually. That really matters, even if cable operators minimize the threat. 

“Addressable market” is a key phrase. Right now, 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 18.6 to 20 million. To be generous, use the 20 million figure. 

AT&T’s fixed network represents perhaps 62 million U.S. homes passed. CenturyLink never reports its homes passed figures, but likely has 20-million or so consumer locations it can market services to. 

The point is that, up to this point, T-Mobile has had zero addressable home broadband market to chase. Verizon has had 20 million homes to market for that purpose. AT&T has been able to market to perhaps 62 million homes; Comcast 57 million homes and Charter about 50 million homes. 

So T-Mobile and Verizon have the most market share to gain by deploying fixed wireless. And the value will not necessarily be that fixed wireless allows those two providers to “take half the market.” The revenue upside from share shifts in low single digits will be meaningful. 

Some might counter that early fixed wireless will not match the top cabled network speeds. That is true. But it also is true that half of U.S. households buy broadband services running between 100 Mbps and 200 Mbps, with perhaps 20 percent of demand requiring lower speeds than that. 

So even if fixed wireless offers lower speeds than cable hybrid fiber coax or telco FTTH, it might arguably still address 70 percent of the U.S. market.

It is conceptually possible that untethered access could eventually displace a substantial portion of the fixed networks business, longer term. 

Up to this point, mobile networks have not been able to match fixed network speeds or costs per gigabit of usage. But that should change. 

Mobile network speeds will increase at high rates, with a rule of thumb being that speeds grow by an order of magnitude every 10 years. One might argue that is less capacity growth than typically happens with fixed networks. +

 

source: Voyager8 

But that might not be the relevant context. What will matter is how much speed, at what price points, mobile or fixed wireless solutions must offer before becoming a reasonable choice, compared to fixed access. 

Assume that in its last release, 5G offers a top speed of 20 Gbps. The last iteration of 6G should support 200 Gbps. The last upgrade of 7G should support 2 Tbps. The last version of 8G should run at a top speed of 20 Tbps.

At that point, the whole rationale of fixed network access will have been challenged, in many use cases, by mobility, as early as 6G. By about that point, average mobile speeds might be so high that most users can easily substitute mobile for fixed access.

To be sure, cost per GB also has to be roughly comparable. But, at some point, useful bandwidth at a reasonable enough price could allow wireless solutions to take lots of market share from cabled network providers. 

 

We never get away from debates about “which is the better choice?” in the connectivity or computing industries. Nor do we generally remember that “one size fits all” rarely is the case. Additionally, all choices are conditioned by “when, where, by whom and why” technology must be deployed. 

The global choice of internet protocol rather than asynchronous transfer mode as the foundation for all next-generation networking is among the exceptions. That really did result in an “all or nothing” outcome. 

But few other choices are so stark. Consider access network platforms. Decades ago there were serious--if brief--debates about whether “fiber or satellite” technologies were “better” for wide area networks. There was speculation about whether “Wi-Fi or mobile” was the better platform for phone connectivity.

There were debates about whether fiber to the home or hybrid fiber coax was “better” for consumer broadband access. 

Now there are arguments about whether local connections, unlicensed wide area low power networks or mobile networks are “better” for internet of things sensors. 

Such questions, while valid, always have to be qualified by the issue of “better for whom?” It might not make sense for a public network provider to consider HFC as a foundation access technology. It virtually always is a logical choice for a cable operator, for the moment.

 “At some point,” optical fiber is universally seen as the technology of choice for telcos and other “cabled media” providers. But wireless remains the key approach for satellite, wireless ISPs and mobile operators. 

What is “better” cannot be determined without knowing the “for whom” part of the business context; the “when?” part of the discussion or the “under what other circumstances?” detail. Fiber to the home might be the “ultimate” choice, but “when to deploy” or “where to deploy” also matter. 

U.S. cable operators in 2020 had at least 69 percent share of the installed base of accounts, according to Leichtman Research Group. Telcos likely had something less than 28 percent of the installed base, accounting for share held by independent internet service providers (wireless, fixed and satellite). 

source: FCC, Bloomberg 

Without government support, FTTH might never make business sense, in some locations. In other cases the business case is so marginal and risky that an alternative, such as fixed or mobile wireless, might well be the alternate choice. For a telco, a “fiber” upgrade might make sense when existing copper facilities must be retired in any case, and where need is not driven by revenue upside, merely facilities replacement. 

For a cable operator, an FTTH overlay could make near-term sense to support business customers, but not yet consumers. But fixed wireless might also make sense for cable operator “edge out” operations, and for the same financial reasons that telcos used wholesale as a way to enter geographically-adjacent markets. 

The questions are even broader when looking at total demand for broadband access. In terms of total connections, in the U.S. market 75 percent of all internet access connections use mobile networks. Just 16 percent use cable HFC, while perhaps 8.6 percent of connections use either fiber or copper telco connections, while everything else--including satellite and fixed wireless--represents less than one percent. 

source: FCC

The point is, how much faster do untethered services need to be--assuming roughly equivalent terms and conditions of usage and price--before a significant percentage of home broadband users consider an untethered solution a functional substitute for fixed network access?

Matching headline speeds might not matter, as most consumers do not buy those services. Untethered options simply have to be “fast enough, priced well enough” to contend for significant share of the home broadband market.

Verizon as Disruptor

As accustomed as we might be to seeing Google, Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, cable TV companies, wireless internet service providers, metro fiber specialists or T-Mobile US as market attackers and share takers, we are unaccustomed to seeing either AT&T or Verizon in such roles.

But Verizon is about to take that role, in fixed networks.

Verizon is launching Verizon 5G Home, its 5G fixed wireless service, on October 1, 2018 in parts of Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles and Sacramento, providing the first U.S. real-world test of customer demand for 5G fixed wireless.

And Verizon has specific business reasons for doing so. Simply, footprint, or homes passed, in its fixed networks business is a key driver for Verizon. Simply put, Verizon has far fewer homes passed than its major fixed network competitors.

source: GSMA Intelligence

Comcast has (can actually sell service to ) about 57 million homes passed. Charter Communications has some 50 million homes passed.

AT&T’s fixed network represents perhaps 62 million U.S. homes passed. Verizon, on the other hand, passes perhaps 27 million homes passed.

As dominant as Verizon is in the mobile services segment, it lacks scale in the fixed networks segment. And that means Verizon can gain revenue by taking market share in the fixed network business.

The companion issue is simply that, similar to Spring and T-Mobile US, Verizon’s revenue is heavily weighted to mobile services. As much as 69 percent of Verizon’s revenue is earned from mobility services. That is less than Sprint or T-Mobile US earn from mobile services, but is highly significant, as it means Verizon, the biggest revenue producer in U.S. mobile, has less room to grow.

source: Seeking Alpha

As cable companies have fueled growth by taking market share in voice services, business services and internet access, so Verizon expects to take share in fixed network internet access.

Some Customers Need More Fiber, Some None

Sometimes the truth emerges even when not intended; at times even when the opposite argument is being made. Consider the argument for gradual introduction of more optical fiber into hybrid fiber coax networks, which is sound thinking.

Though making that case, one optical supplier executive has said that “connectivity is increasingly transforming from static wireline to mobile or wireless delivery,” said Cate McNaught, Corning Optical Communications emerging applications market development manager.

That is not to say fixed network access is going away, or will not underpin wireless or mobile network backhaul (fronthaul, anyhaul). It is to acknowledge that content and video consumption on mobile and untethered devices seems to be the main trend right now, with mobile over the top video services proliferating, and more content supplied by all OTT services being consumed on mobile devices.

The issue then is not the need for more optical fiber in access networks, but the business models and rationale for doing so. The problem is stranded assets Today, fiber to the home networks in the U.S. market strands as much as 60 percent of the deployed FTTH capital. That creates a bigger return on investment problem.  

Consumer spending on communications and entertainment services has not changed all that much, in most countries, although the specific products purchased have changed.  

At the same time, the profit margin from many services also has compressed. Prices per gigabyte for consumers using internet access services have declined by about an order of magnitude since 2012, in the U.K. market, for example.

source: Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport

The stranded assets problem simply is that when a ubiquitous network is built, not every single home or business buys every service. Not every consumer buys fixed network voice, entertainment video or internet access. Not every business buys the same mix of voice and data services, or mobility.

The problem really is compounded, however, as multiple suppliers compete. If the demand for any single product is 95 percent, and there are three competent suppliers, on average, any supplier can only expect to get revenue from 32 percent of locations passed by the network.

In other words, 68 percent of locations passed earn no revenue.

Such problems can intensify when the demand curve changes, as when consumers abandon use of fixed network voice in favor of mobile voice. The remedy, up to this point, has been product bundles.

One set of numbers from the Comcast third quarter 2017 results is instructive: Comcast details the number of customers taking single, dual-product and three-product or four-product packages.

About 30 percent of consumer customers buy just one product, a third buy two products, while 37 percent buy three or four products as a bundle. Looking at each buy as a “unit sold,” those figures help service providers deal with stranded assets.

If 37 percent of Comcast customers buy an average 3.5 products, that equates to an average of 1.3 products per home passed. If 33 percent buy two products, that equates to one unit sold across 66 percent of the homes passed. The 30 percent of homes that buy only a single product, when added to the dual-product homes, equate to one product sold to 96 percent of homes passed. Altogether, those figures mean Comcast sells an average of two products per home passed.

And that is how the economics work, even when stranded assets range from 40 percent to 60 percent.

The business model will come under more stress if and when mobile alternatives emerge more strongly. So two apparently contradictory claims can be made: there will be a growing need for more access optical fiber, and there also will be less need for some of it.

The remaining customers will need optical fiber advantages more; but fewer customers will buy.