Diana Goovaerts

With Q4 2022 earnings mostly in the rearview, a clearer picture of fiber build targets for the coming year has emerged, at least as far as US operators are concerned. While some operators have lowered their targets for both 2023 and their overall build plans, the industry still plans to build millions of passings in 2023. An informal tally found operators are plotting to roll out fiber to between 6.5 million and 7 million new locations – at a minimum. Top broadband operators' Q4 data reveals the following fiber updates:

Comcast is in the midst of a massive overhaul of its network, rolling out mid-split upgrades and plotting the launch of DOCSIS 4.0 in the second half of 2023. But while Comcast remains firmly in the cable camp, Cable EVP and Chief Network Officer Elad Nafshi said there is a place for fiber in its future. And, he said, it’ll soon provide a more in-depth glimpse of what that future looks like. To be clear, there’s already a ton of fiber in Comcast’s network. According to Nafshi, Comcast’s nationwide backbone network – which it calls the core network – is all fiber.

President Joe Biden called on Congress during his State of the Union address to pass legislation that would prevent operators from levying so-called “junk fees.” That’s unlikely to actually happen, but similar ideas could be adopted at the state level and operators will be left looking for new ways to pass on costs to consumers. The details of the Junk Fee Prevention Act have yet to be released.

Comcast exited 2022 with several thousand fewer employees than it had the year prior, but cable rival Charter Communications significantly expanded its own workforce over the same period. The changes highlight the different approaches the operators are taking to cut costs and drive efficiency as macroeconomic challenges mount. It’s not necessarily a surprise that Comcast’s employee count dropped given the operator confirmed layoffs in its cable field organization and media divisions in recent months.

Frontier Communications’ multi-year fiber expansion roadmap calls for it to ramp deployments to hit 1.6 million new passings in 2023 and it looks like a decent chunk of those will be in West Virginia. The operator unveiled plans to invest $100 million to hit 100,000 additional locations in the state this year alone. The new passings will build on the more than 125,000 Frontier has already built in the state over the past two years.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has a major hand in broadband matters. The agency's Rural Utilities Service (RUS) is responsible for overseeing a number of rural broadband funding programs, including the well-known multi-billion-dollar ReConnect loan and grant initiative. Andrew Berke has only recently taken the reigns as RUS Administrator, having been appointed by President Biden in October 2022.

Congress already allocated $65 billion for broadband in 2021 via the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), but as negotiations over the 2023 Farm Bill get underway some are angling for even more cash to boost rural broadband. According to the Congressional Research Service, the Farm Bill is a sprawling piece of legislation covering agricultural and food programs that are revisited every five years or so. The last Farm Bill was passed in late 2018, meaning it is up for renewal in the back half of 2023.

Time is running out for wireless internet service providers (WISPs) to change the government’s mind about unlicensed spectrum. With pressure mounting, Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA) CEO David Zumwalt sent a fresh letter to the head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) warning its current rules could lead to $8.6 billion in broadband subsidy money being spent on areas that are already covered by fixed wireless access services using unlicensed airwaves.

States have already submitted more than 300,000 location challenges since the Federal Communications Commission opened the door for them to request corrections to its new and improved broadband map. But as a deadline for availability challenges looms, some states said they’ve encountered issues with the submission process. The FCC said that while individual challenges are visible on its broadband map interface, it is not reporting aggregate figures about the challenges it has received. More than 344,000 challenges have been filed between nine states.

Lumos is looking to enter its third state as the operator works toward a goal of reaching 1 million fiber passings by 2026. Specifically, it’s planning to spend $100 million to build out 1,200 miles of infrastructure in South Carolina, focusing on the Columbia metro region. The company’s fiber is already available to around 200,000 locations across North Carolina and Virginia. CEO Brian Stading plans to finish overbuilding its legacy ILEC footprint with fiber by early 2023 and thereafter expand into new communities both within the two states and elsewhere in the Mid-Atlantic region.