Fierce

Consumers in central Florida are apparently hungry for fiber. WideOpenWest (WOW!) CEO Teresa Elder said the company is seeing strong uptake of its service, including its higher-tier products. WOW! announced its launch in Altamonte Springs, FL, in January 2022, noting at the time it had around 1,000 passings in the city. Elder said the market had already achieved a 25% penetration rate – which she noted was quite near the 30% rate WOW!

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.