The Rush for Fiber Is Strangling Telecommunications Companies From Louisiana to Lisbon

Telecommunications and cable companies are emerging as some of the biggest losers of the high interest rate era. Buoyed by a sudden increase in demand, many firms took on vast amounts of credit to boost spending on increasing download speeds through expensive fiber rollouts. Now, changing consumer behaviors are causing turmoil and pushing companies in the US and Europe to invest in new infrastructure. Business customers have shifted to cloud-based services that aren’t linked to their broadband provider, exposing workplace-focused telecommunications companies such as Lumen to competitive pressures that forced them to make pricey upgrades to expand their offerings. Home networks required overhauls too as people increasingly sought more bandwidth and faster connections for remote work. That’s led to a costly race for labor and components to build out fiber networks. Cable companies and mobile wireless carriers have rolled out their own home Internet solutions to compete.