Windstream hits 300,000 new passings in 2022, targets 2023 repeat

Residents of Morgantown (PA) became the latest to tap into Windstream’s Kinetic fiber network. But according to Jeff Small, President of Kinetic, Morgantown is just the beginning of Windstream’s plans for 2023. The newest passings in Pennsylvania are a part of Windstream’s national rollout to overbuild fiber on top of its historic DSL footprint. “We’re building 300,000 fiber passings a year,” explained Small. “When you look at the end of 2021, we had 164,000 fiber customers. [At the] end of last year, [we’re] up to 289,000.” That means that at the close of 2022, Kinetic had snagged another close to 125,000 new fiber subscribers. In 2022, Windstream won more than $202 million in broadband grants in Georgia, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Thus far in 2023, it’s scored another $34.9 million in Georgia and has applied for several grants in Nebraska. It also secured $523 million in support covering 18 states from the Federal Communications Commission’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction, which will be distributed over the course of 10 years. As Kinetic’s fiber offerings roll out, some customers are naturally migrating from DSL services over to fiber. In competitive areas, Small estimates market penetration to shake out to about 30 percent. For non-competitive areas, though, expectations tick up to 40 percent. Even though some states are larger with potentially more customers – like Kentucky, Georgia, and Texas – Small was adamant that the size of a state or a market isn’t going to sway how resources and time are allocated to Kinetic’s upgrades. And with $42.5 billion in Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) funding getting ready to be allocated later this year, Small is cautiously optimistic.