In U.S., Federal Funding Changes FTTH, Mobile, Fixed Wireless, Cable Business Case

Facilities-based access network business models are changing, and higher levels of government spending to bring down costs for networks in rural and other high-cost areas is among the reasons. The 2021 passage of an “infrastructure” bill by the U.S. Congress will reduce costs in several ways. 

The bill includes $42.45 billion in grants to states for broadband projects, which can range from network deployment to data collection to help determine areas that lack service. Not all of that money will build infrastructure, to be sure. But much will. And the plan allocates at least $100 million in funds to every state, with lesser amounts to U.S. territories. 

source: S&P Global Market Intelligence 

If the money is not wasted, the cost of adding new internet access facilities should fall. Also, additional locations could find they are upgraded to  increase connection speed. 

There also are provisions that will stimulate demand. The bill allocates $14.2 billion for consumption subsidies. To be sure, there have been subsidy provisions before. But the new bill widens eligibility for such subsidies. 

Included in the bill is a $30-a-month voucher to low-income Americans to pay for internet service.

This program replaces the temporary $50-a-month Emergency Broadband Benefit program that was part of efforts to sustain the economy during the period when work and schooling were mostly shut down,  offering less money monthly, but increasing the number of those eligible.

Another demand stimulation effort is the allocation of $2.75 billion for digital inclusion and equity projects, such as improving digital literacy or online skills for seniors.

Additionally, $2 billion was allocated  for rural broadband construction by U.S. Department of Agriculture, as well as another $2 billion for a Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program run by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). Both ideally will help create new facilities. 

The bill also allocated $1 billion to build "middle mile" infrastructure to connect internet service providers to internet access points.

Finally, $600 million was authorized for bonds to finance broadband deployment projects in rural areas.

All that amounts to stimulating demand and supply of internet access, ideally. Undoubtedly some of the money will be wasted. 

But that much additional demand and supply stimulation is going to change business models for the better in many cases, directly lowering the cost of building facilities and defraying consumption as well. 

That is among the reasons many telcos are boosting their spending on fiber to home projects, AT&T, Lumen Technologies and Frontier Communications among them, and why other firms such as T-Mobile and Verizon are dramatically investing in fixed wireless on a national basis. 

Business models are better on the demand side, while the cost of such facilities is lower on the supply side.

"Time" is an Important Variable for FTTH

Almost 40 years ago, an engineering vice president at a major connectivity provider quipped that “fiber is the future….and always will be.” The humor lay in the fact that deploying the “best network” requires a complicated assessment of what constitutes “best” for a particular contestant, at a particular time, with a particular combination of assets and constraints. 

We might note that the argument for fiber to the home as the ultimate solution has been “correct” for at least 50 years. But it also has not been the “best for my business today” for that same length of time, for every provider and in every geography, given the existing cost and demand curves. 

Today, the analysis is even more complicated by the change in demand. Where the business cases might once have been built on revenues from internet access, video entertainment services and voice, increasingly the fixed network business case is driven by consumer broadband and mobility plus enterprise use cases. 

"Cost per location" is one key input. But so is "expected revenue." "Cost per passing" and "cost per customer" as well as "revenue per passing" and "revenue per customer" also matter when competitive conditions prevail. The reason is that a great percentage of invested capital will be stranded, generating no revenue.

source: Semantic Scholar

The payback model necessarily extends beyond FTTH to mobility platform support and enterprise and business communications demand. The traditional arguments about lower operating cost remain. 

Evaluators might agree, in principle, that fiber to the home is the ultimate “best” solution in some cases, while also insisting other choices continue to make financial sense in the immediate time frame and for some business models. 

Rarely, if ever, in the access portion of the connectivity or computing businesses is there one single solution that works “best” for all use cases and requirements. Instead, architects and business managers have to balance numerous values and costs.

Among them, “time” is an important consideration, even if not shown in the formal cost and performance analyses. Basically, this dimension boils down to the time value of money. 

Making 10 Gbps internet access speeds available “right now” when demand is at far lower levels can be the wrong business decision. Generally, internet service providers want to match performance to customer demand and willingness to pay. Raw performance is not the only issue. 

Platform choices often boil down to “what works for the next decade, in the context of our fundamental business model choices?”

In other words, it can make sense to choose a less-capable platform now because it boosts revenue upside and reduces risk, even if that platform is not the “ultimate” solution. 

Lumen Technologies now estimates a cost less than $1,000 per passing for FTTH, in a 16-state territory that is about 70 percent urban and suburban, after the sale of former CenturyLink assets in 20 states, for example, about half what such investments might have cost two decades ago, and perhaps a third of what might have been necessary 40 years ago. 

But what makes sense for Lumen or many independent internet service providers does not make sense for Starlink, Comcast, many rural ISPs, T-Mobile or even Verizon and AT&T, in some instances. Starlink’s value is based on applications suited to constellations of low earth orbit satellites. Comcast can still rely on hybrid fiber coax as a mainstay, if not the sole platform. 

And demand is better matched to facilities cost in many rural, mountainous and hilly or heavily forested areas using some platform other than FTTH. 

T-Mobile will focus on both mobile and fixed wireless. Verizon, especially, will rely on 5G fixed wireless outside its fixed network footprint. 

The point is that there is no contradiction between the belief that “optical fiber to the home is the ultimate solution” and the countervailing arguments that other platforms make more sense in the shorter term, in many geographies, by ISPs with different business models, capital investment constraints or business models. 

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PTC'22, New Broadband Funding, PTC Impact on Locals

With PTC’22 just a week or so away, program committee members Joe Weinman and Gary Kim talk about this year’s program with Burt Lum of Bytemarks Cafe. 

They discuss highlights of the conference program, changes in PTC mission over the last 40 years, impact of new federal broadband funding on Hawaii, and the impact of PTC on the local economy. 

You can listen to the full podcast here.  

Burt Lum

Joe Weinman

Gary Kim

Home Broadband Prices have Dropped in Real Terms, Over the Last 2.5 Decades

U.S. home broadband inflation-adjusted costs have declined since the mid-1990s, according toan analysis of U.S. Consumer Price Index data. That will often not be obvious when observers consider only “current” prices for home broadband, and compare them to past “retail” prices. 

Comparing prices internationally over time is even harder, since there additionally are currency issues and general cost of living differences between nations.

Two primary forces are at work: price inflation over time and changes in quality or performance and features of the “same” products over time. Still, despite the oft-heard complaint that home broadband prices are "too high," they actually have dropped over two decades.

Consider U.S. prices.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, prices for internet services and electronic information providers are 21 percent lower in 2021 versus 1997, for example. 

Other communication and computing related prices also have fallen, often in both stated and “real” terms after adjusting for inflation. 

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, prices for communication are 22  percent lower in 2021 versus 1993.

Between 1993 and 2021: Communication experienced an average inflation rate of -0.88 percent per year. 

Compared to the overall inflation rate of 2.26 percent during this same period, inflation for communication was significantly lower.

Also, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, prices for computer software and accessories were 74 percent lower in 2021, compared to 1997. Information technology, hardware and services are 92.64% lower in 2021 versus 1988. 

Prices for information and information processing are 27 percent  lower in 2021 versus 1993. 

Hedonic adjustments also are exceedingly common in computing and information products over time. The obvious examples are the price and performance of dial-up internet access in 1995 and broadband in 2021; the cost of computing operations; data storage or bandwidth. 

Hedonic qualIty adjustment is a method used by economists to adjust prices whenever the characteristics of the products included in the consumer price index change because of innovation. Hedonic quality adjustment also is used when older products are improved and become new products. 

That often has been the case for computing products, televisions, consumer electronics and--dare we note--broadband internet access services. 

Hedonically adjusted price indices for broadband internet access in the U.S. market then looks like this:

source: Bureau of Labor Statistics 

In other words, dial-up internet access and gigabit broadband are not the same product. 10 Mbps broadband is not the same product as 100 Mbps or 500 Mbps service. 

The same trend holds for mobile phone service, phones and other consumer electronics gear. The value and “quality” of a mobile phone subscription in 2000 is not the same as the 2020 value. Nor are the capabilities of a mobile phone the same in 2020 as was true in 2000. 

Frontier Fiber Model Shows How Models Have Changed

In recent investor presentations, Frontier Communications has made three points about its prospects for revenue growth based on optical fiber deployments: the number of consumer broadband accounts; the number of businesses within 250 feet of existing fiber assets and the number of cell towers within one mile of Frontier fiber assets. 

Recent presentations also have shown fiber-to-home home broadband average revenue per user of about $63. 

source: Frontier Communications 

For those of you who have followed the business model for home broadband over the past few decades, that number might seem quite surprising. The late 1990s justification for FTTH was the ability to sell subscription TV as well as faster internet access. Keep in mind that “faster” at that point was 10 Mbps. 

About 2000 the “average” U.S. cable TV bill was estimated to be about $32 a month, according to CordCutting.com. It actually is hard to remember what home internet access actually cost between 1995 and 2000, in large part because most people were buying dial-up services in 1995, while broadband subscriptions did not reach parity with dial-up until about 2005. 

In August 2000, only 4.4 percent of U.S. households had a home broadband connection, by some estimates.  

But a dial-up cost in the $10 a month to $15 a month range is close enough for 1995. Consumer broadband with speeds in the less-than-1.5 Mbps region cost more than that, perhaps in the $30 a month range by 2005. 

The point is that a telco customer with a voice line generating $30 a month, plus internet plus video could have been worth about $100 a month in revenue. Ignoring for the moment the issue of market share in each of the services (compared with a competing cable TV company), the potential revenue was as much as $100 a month for an FTTH-passed consumer location.

Now Frontier says ARPU for an FTTH customer is about $63 a month. Assume that figure includes some amount of voice revenue and zero video revenue. The change in revenue expectation (not adjusted for inflation) per potential customer is roughly 40 percent lower than might have been the case in 1995. 

The biggest change is the assumption that future revenue will be driven principally by one service--home broadband--not three potential sources. 

That was impossible to foresee in 1995. Absent the potential upside of video, and being charitable about the future of fixed network voice, most executives would have argued that the upgrade to FTTH would never make financial sense. 

So lots of assumptions have changed. Among them, in Frontier’s case, is the expectation that business customer revenues from cell tower backhaul and business broadband and services will underpin the FTTH network business model. 

The mid-1990s expectation of higher revenues from video and internet was only partially validated. Linear video no longer figures into the model, though over-the-top streaming might, for some access providers. 

Revenue contribution from voice arguably has been far worse than initially expected. 

So consumer revenue is principally driven by home broadband. Overall payback models for FTTH now lean on business customer revenues and backhaul. 

It is part of the change in FTTH business models in the U.S. market.

How Big a Market for 100 Mbps Home Broadband at $25 a Month?

Verizon's 5G fixed wireless now is available for $25 a month. Those plans come with extras such as streaming content subscriptions. Typical  download speeds of 90-170 Mbps with higher speeds and peaks over 1 Gbps in areas where millimeter wave capabilities are activated.

Typical upload speeds of 15-30 Mbps with peak upload speeds over 100 Mbps. 

Based on current buyer behavior, that might appeal to 20 percent to perhaps 30 percent (or more) of the home broadband market, the lower figure representing customers who already buy service at 100 Mbps or less. The higher figure adds customers who might prefer faster speeds, but for whom a $25 monthly cost is preferable to $50. 

Single-user households or price-sensitive customers are likely possible buyers. 

source: Openvault 

For Verizon, fixed wireless is important as it extends Verizon’s home broadband coverage so much. The company expects fixed wireless will represent 71 percent of its home broadband passings by about 2025.   

Will U.S. Telecom Market Turn to Bigger Bundles?

AT&T says it added total postpaid net adds of 1.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2021, including some 880,000 postpaid phones. “Each of the 2021 quarters has improved,” said John Stankey, AT&T CEO. 

For the full-year 2021, postpaid phone net additions were 3.2 million, “AT&T’s highest annual postpaid phone net adds in more than a decade,” the company says. 

Many observers believe the rather-torrid pace of net additions in the mobile service market should cool in 2022, though. 

Covid restrictions on schooling and work also are considered to have accelerated growth, possibly pulling forward some latent demand. Some amount of higher subsidies should also have helped boost sales. 

Competition from cable TV companies and Dish Network eventually will affect growth prospects as well. 

And some argue that a wave of promotions likewise has stimulated demand that is essentially pulled forward as well. Stankey does not agree with that argument. “Our cost per acquisition is dropping,” he said. “Our lifetime embedded value is increasing as churn goes lower and average revenue per user grows.”

In the event that such growth drivers end, overall growth rates could--or should--slow. In that case, net market share gains by some companies or others will become more important. T-Mobile, for example, has been gaining share for years.  

AT&T also added 270,000 fiber-to-home subscribers for the quarter. “We did really well with home broadband as well,” said Stankey. 

Full-year 2021 fiber net adds totaled about one million, the fourth consecutive year in which the company has added one million or more fiber subscribers. 

AT&T ended the year with an additional 2.6 million FTTH-passed customer locations, compared to its prior expectation of about 2.5 million. The company still is targeting 30 million FTTH home locations by the end of 2025. 

AT&T also ended the year with 73.8 million total global HBO Max and HBO subscribers, ahead of prior guidance suggesting accounts between 70 million to 73 million. “Warner Media knocked it out of the park,” said Stankey. 

Cash flow also improved, he added, driven by efficiencies, lower churn levels and profitable growth. 

In operational terms, Stankey also suggested the industry might well be seeing a turn towards consolidated offers where single-supplier offers might be viewed more attractively. One example might be the value proposition that “it doesn’t matter where you go, we will handle your bandwidth,” Stankey said. 

As you might expect for a firm that has the largest fixed network position in the market as well as mobile assets, Stankey believes there “could be a reordering of industry structure” coming that favors firms with broad fixed and mobile offerings. “My gut tells me there are more consolidated offers coming,” where one firm supplies all a customer’s needs.