Cable One says it isn't seeing fiber competition from AT&T or Lumen – yet

Cable One saw an uptick in customer growth and revenue in first quarter 2022, driven by business acquisitions, and is seeking rapid fiber expansion with its Clearwave Fiber investment. CEO Julie Laulis thinks the latter especially puts the operator in a vital position against competitors. Clearwave Fiber is a joint venture formed by Cable One and a handful of private equity firms in January 2022, which aims to to deploy fiber-to-the-premises for underserved markets. Cable One invested about $440 million into Clearwave at the transaction’s close on January 1, with certain fiber assets from Hargray Communications – one of the companies acquired by Cable One last year – making up a portion of the joint venture.  “We’re not seeing anything out of AT&T or CenturyLink, quite honestly,” Laulis said. “We have seen Frontier doing builds and they seem to be the biggest mover out of those three.” Half of Cable One’s fiber footprint is covered by AT&T, Laulis pointed out, and the other half by CenturyLink (now Lumen Technologies). Frontier, the third operator in Cable One’s footprint, spans a significantly smaller coverage area. Frontier recently reported a gain of 20,000 broadband customers, many of them new to fiber.