Communications research
Fixed Wireless Went Where Fiber Didn't: Competition, Density and the Operators Most Exposed
Fixed wireless adds a qualifying competitor at 44 percent of US serviceable locations. Its coverage peaks in the same suburban density bands as fiber, but it also provides an alternative at 18.5 million addresses with only one qualifying wireline provider.
Fixed wireless now overlaps between a third and a half of every major operator footprint in the country, cable, fiber and telco alike, and it has reached as much as half of the addresses a cable operator serves with no wireline rival. This article shows where it went, whose footprints it presses hardest, and where the fiber it stands in for has still not been built.
Fixed wireless overlaps half of every major footprint
The twelve largest wireline footprints: how much fixed wireless overlaps, and how much of each operator's sole-provider footprint it has reached
· · The twelve largest wireline footprints, each chart sorted high to low. Filings are as of 31 December 2025 and pre-date the Charter and Cox merger, so the two are shown separately.
Cite these charts: G2M Insights, "Fixed Wireless Went Where Fiber Didn't: Competition, Density and the Operators Most Exposed," G2M Communications Research, edition 2025-12-31-v7, g2m.ai/research/communications/fixed-wireless-vs-fiber-broadband-competition.
Start with the left chart. Fixed wireless at the federal benchmark now overlaps between a third and a little over half of every major operator footprint, and it does not much care what that footprint is made of: Cable One, Metronet and AT&T lead at 54 percent, Comcast is at 46, and Verizon is the outlier at 34 because carriers do not aim fixed wireless at their own fiber and Verizon has the most fiber of the three.
The right chart narrows to the addresses each operator serves as the only wireline provider, and asks how many of those now have a fixed-wireless alternative. Cable One tops it at 50 percent; Cox and Comcast follow at 45, Charter at 43; Verizon is lowest at 16. The fiber operators appear on the same scale, but their sole-provider base is tiny, two to three percent of their footprint, because fiber was built on top of cable and a fiber address almost always has a cable alternative. The cable operators serve between a tenth and two fifths of their addresses alone, and the three largest more than a third. Fixed wireless reaching half your footprint is a nuisance when the other half already had a rival; it is a different problem when a third of that footprint had no rival at all.
In addresses: fixed wireless now reaches 6.3 million of the 14.1 million homes Comcast serves alone, and 6.0 million of Charter's 13.8 million.
Among operators of similar size in similar towns, Cable One is the most exposed at 50 percent and Mediacom among the least at 40 percent. Their markets are about equally dense. Cable One's have the least fiber of any major cable footprint; Mediacom's have the most. Where fiber never came, fixed wireless did.
All 33 operators with 400,000 or more addresses
| Operator | Mainly | Addresses at 100/20 | Fixed wireless present | Served alone | Of those, contested |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Comcast | cable | 38,786,664 | 46% | 36% | 45% |
| Charter | cable | 35,944,137 | 48% | 38% | 43% |
| AT&T | fiber | 19,375,296 | 54% | 2% | 38% |
| Verizon | fiber | 9,361,286 | 34% | 2% | 16% |
| Cox | cable | 7,297,869 | 47% | 42% | 45% |
| Frontier | fiber | 6,544,456 | 50% | 3% | 38% |
| Optimum | cable | 5,344,767 | 44% | 25% | 42% |
| Lumen | fiber | 3,155,029 | 51% | 2% | 42% |
| Mediacom | cable | 2,665,105 | 47% | 27% | 40% |
| Metronet | fiber | 2,612,682 | 54% | 3% | 43% |
| Astound | cable | 2,518,837 | 52% | 10% | 30% |
| Cable One | cable | 2,280,032 | 54% | 37% | 50% |
| Google Fiber | fiber | 1,886,258 | 61% | 0% | 46% |
| Brightspeed | fiber | 1,793,486 | 52% | 5% | 30% |
| WOW | cable | 1,733,137 | 52% | 3% | 34% |
| Windstream | fiber | 1,526,135 | 43% | 16% | 24% |
| Breezeline | cable | 1,333,175 | 43% | 20% | 31% |
| TDS Telecom | fiber | 1,113,559 | 49% | 20% | 39% |
| Fidium | fiber | 1,033,780 | 37% | 6% | 13% |
| Liberty | cable | 989,172 | 33% | 46% | 35% |
| altafiber | fiber | 953,413 | 47% | 5% | 22% |
| Ziply Fiber | fiber | 763,929 | 49% | 5% | 22% |
| Midco | cable | 650,944 | 44% | 39% | 38% |
| Lumos | fiber | 641,150 | 45% | 3% | 16% |
| Vyve | cable | 558,133 | 50% | 38% | 49% |
| Claro | fiber | 556,278 | 30% | 16% | 19% |
| GoNetspeed | fiber | 540,181 | 36% | 5% | 20% |
| Shentel | fiber | 530,410 | 45% | 24% | 20% |
| Armstrong | cable | 462,472 | 34% | 61% | 31% |
| Allo | fiber | 436,620 | 60% | 5% | 37% |
| Service Electric | cable | 424,904 | 51% | 33% | 46% |
| Conexon Connect | fiber | 415,600 | 29% | 48% | 25% |
| Sonic | fiber | 406,292 | 80% | 0% | 39% |
Cite this table: G2M Insights, "Fixed Wireless Went Where Fiber Didn't: Competition, Density and the Operators Most Exposed," G2M Communications Research, edition 2025-12-31-v7, g2m.ai/research/communications/fixed-wireless-vs-fiber-broadband-competition.
If you run a cable footprint, your sole-provider addresses are the ones under attack, and a rival that needs no trench has already reached about two in five of them. These figures are availability, not lost customers; they mark where the fight is, not who is winning it.
At 44 percent of US addresses, fixed wireless is a competitor you did not have before
Every US address, by what fixed wireless changes there
Cite these figures: G2M Insights, "Fixed Wireless Went Where Fiber Didn't: Competition, Density and the Operators Most Exposed," G2M Communications Research, edition 2025-12-31-v7, g2m.ai/research/communications/fixed-wireless-vs-fiber-broadband-competition.
Where it counts, fixed wireless is mostly turning duopolies into markets:
| What it does at the address | Share of US addresses | Addresses |
|---|---|---|
| It is the only real option No cable or fiber at 100/20 at the address | 2.5% | 2,848,628 |
| It breaks a monopoly One wireline provider, fixed wireless makes two | 16.2% | 18,540,411 |
| It creates a third choice Two wireline providers, fixed wireless makes three | 20.5% | 23,492,136 |
| It adds to a crowded market Three or more already there | 5.0% | 5,703,239 |
Cite this table: G2M Insights, "Fixed Wireless Went Where Fiber Didn't: Competition, Density and the Operators Most Exposed," G2M Communications Research, edition 2025-12-31-v7, g2m.ai/research/communications/fixed-wireless-vs-fiber-broadband-competition.
At 42 million addresses, fixed wireless is the second or third provider a household can switch to. It is not duplicating anyone's network. It is the marginal competitor in most of the country, and the rival most of your customers will hear from next.
Your fixed-wireless rival built where your fiber rival built: the suburbs
Where each technology is available, from the least to the most densely populated neighborhoods
Cite this chart: G2M Insights, "Fixed Wireless Went Where Fiber Didn't: Competition, Density and the Operators Most Exposed," G2M Communications Research, edition 2025-12-31-v7, g2m.ai/research/communications/fixed-wireless-vs-fiber-broadband-competition.
The mobile carriers had a choice about where to point their fixed-wireless capacity, and they pointed it at the same neighborhoods the fiber builders chose. Both lines are lowest in the least dense tenth of the country and both peak in the suburbs. In the most rural tenth of addresses, fixed wireless reaches 32 percent of homes against 50 percent at its suburban peak, and only 10 percent of those rural addresses have three real options.
The fiber line dips before it climbs: it is higher at the rural edge than in the small towns and exurbs one step in, because subsidized and cooperative builds have covered the true countryside. The soft spot in American fiber is the band too dense to qualify for rural money and too sparse to attract a commercial build.
Fixed wireless is a suburban product that deployed on fiber's logic, about eighteen points behind it. If your weak markets are rural, fixed wireless is not the rival that is coming for them.
In rural and dense urban markets, fixed wireless is the competition
How much of each neighborhood's competition would vanish without fixed wireless
Cite this chart: G2M Insights, "Fixed Wireless Went Where Fiber Didn't: Competition, Density and the Operators Most Exposed," G2M Communications Research, edition 2025-12-31-v7, g2m.ai/research/communications/fixed-wireless-vs-fiber-broadband-competition.
In the most rural tenth of addresses, 87 percent of whatever competition exists is fixed wireless. In the suburbs that falls to 71 percent. In the densest urban neighborhoods it climbs back to 76 percent. The suburbs are the only part of the country where a second wireline network was widely built. Everywhere else, the operator across the table from you is a mobile carrier.
A pricing or retention plan built for a wireline rival is aimed at the wrong company in most rural and dense urban markets. The rival there is Verizon, T-Mobile or AT&T, selling spare spectrum.
58.4 million people in metro America have cable, almost no fiber, and one rival
Metropolitan neighborhoods where fewer than three in ten addresses can get fiber
Cite these figures: G2M Insights, "Fixed Wireless Went Where Fiber Didn't: Competition, Density and the Operators Most Exposed," G2M Communications Research, edition 2025-12-31-v7, g2m.ai/research/communications/fixed-wireless-vs-fiber-broadband-competition.
The fiber gap is usually described as a rural problem. Most of it is not. These are suburbs and city neighborhoods, nine in ten inside a metropolitan area, where a second wireline network was never worth building to anyone who might have built it. The only entrant that came was one that did not have to dig.
| Metro | Addresses in the gap | People | Have fiber | Have fixed wireless |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin | 1,277,162 | 5.0M | 7% | 51% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim | 775,278 | 4.2M | 9% | 49% |
| Detroit-Warren-Dearborn | 730,881 | 2.2M | 8% | 42% |
| Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler | 659,138 | 2.0M | 8% | 47% |
| Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue | 434,697 | 1.5M | 6% | 36% |
| San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad | 338,804 | 1.4M | 9% | 41% |
| Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom | 301,356 | 1.0M | 8% | 56% |
| Las Vegas-Henderson-Paradise | 287,208 | 1.0M | 10% | 34% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley | 286,148 | 1.3M | 9% | 82% |
| Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario | 277,352 | 1.0M | 10% | 43% |
Cite this table: G2M Insights, "Fixed Wireless Went Where Fiber Didn't: Competition, Density and the Operators Most Exposed," G2M Communications Research, edition 2025-12-31-v7, g2m.ai/research/communications/fixed-wireless-vs-fiber-broadband-competition.
Metros 11 to 25
| 11. Tucson | 239,343 | 0.6M | 7% | 43% |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12. Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington | 227,016 | 0.8M | 9% | 39% |
| 13. New York-Newark-Jersey City | 207,105 | 0.8M | 7% | 43% |
| 14. Boston-Cambridge-Newton | 206,965 | 1.0M | 3% | 43% |
| 15. Albuquerque | 206,616 | 0.6M | 4% | 40% |
| 16. Columbus | 204,415 | 0.7M | 13% | 49% |
| 17. San Juan-Bayam�n-Caguas | 195,078 | 0.6M | 11% | 33% |
| 18. Baltimore-Columbia-Towson | 190,522 | 0.6M | 3% | 62% |
| 19. Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington | 190,017 | 0.6M | 4% | 48% |
| 20. Denver-Aurora-Lakewood | 189,750 | 0.7M | 8% | 52% |
| 21. Pittsburgh | 167,238 | 0.4M | 6% | 37% |
| 22. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara | 159,031 | 0.7M | 10% | 52% |
| 23. Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton | 148,423 | 0.4M | 5% | 52% |
| 24. St. Louis | 137,651 | 0.4M | 9% | 57% |
| 25. Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach | 132,993 | 1.0M | 14% | 44% |
Cite this table: G2M Insights, "Fixed Wireless Went Where Fiber Didn't: Competition, Density and the Operators Most Exposed," G2M Communications Research, edition 2025-12-31-v7, g2m.ai/research/communications/fixed-wireless-vs-fiber-broadband-competition.
For a fiber builder, this is the address list. For a cable operator, it is the footprint where the next rival arrives without a trench. Whether any of it pencils out depends on permits, poles and buildings, none of which these filings can see.
A carrier’s fixed-wireless footprint shows where its fiber is absent today
What a rival’s fixed-wireless footprint tells you about its current coverage
Verizon and AT&T both sell fiber and fixed wireless, and neither sells them in the same place. In neighborhoods where Verizon offers both, its fixed wireless reaches 1 percent of the addresses its fiber passes and 29 percent of the addresses it does not. AT&T shows the same pattern at 2 percent and 5 percent. Neither company competes with itself.
The carriers differ in where they report coverage: Verizon’s footprint peaks in the suburbs, T-Mobile’s a little earlier, and AT&T’s coverage continues to rise across the densest urban tract groups. These are differences in current availability, not evidence of future construction plans.
The national carriers supply more than nine tenths of the fixed wireless that adds a third choice to an already competitive address. But where fixed wireless is the only real option a household has, more than a quarter of it comes from regional operators. The addresses most dependent on fixed wireless are served by the smallest companies selling it.
Verizon and AT&T report little overlap between their own fiber and fixed-wireless offers. Their wireless footprints identify places where they currently compete without fiber. That makes them useful starting points for competitive analysis, but they do not establish where either carrier will—or will not—build next.
All of this holds at one speed. Raise the bar and the third provider disappears
Why the threat is real and bounded at the same time
Everything above is measured at 100 Mbps down and 20 up, today's federal benchmark. Our metro ranking showed what happens when the bar moves: at 250/25 the share of metro addresses with three real options falls from 38 percent to 12, and at a gigabit to 10. The third provider does not get weaker as customers' expectations rise. It vanishes, because it was fixed wireless.
The same limit shows up inside the filings. Where a fixed-wireless offer clears the benchmark, the typical filing advertises 300/20. Where it does not, the typical filing advertises 25/3. Those are two different products, and roughly a third of American addresses have only the second one.
Fixed wireless is doing real competitive work at more than 50 million addresses today. It is not a second wireline network, and the markets that depend on it return to duopoly the moment the bar moves. If you can sell the tier above it, that is the tier to sell.
What it means for your footprint
Four findings, read from the operator's side of the table
- Your sole-provider addresses are the ones under attack. Fixed wireless has already reached about two in five of the addresses the large cable operators serve with no wireline rival.
- In rural and dense urban markets the rival is a mobile carrier. A retention plan built for a wireline overbuilder is aimed at the wrong company there.
- A carrier's fixed-wireless map shows where it has no fiber today. Read it as an exposure map for the present, not as a construction forecast.
- Everything here holds at 100/20. Sell the tier above it and the third provider disappears, because it was fixed wireless.
These figures are reported availability, not subscribers. They mark where the fight is, not who is winning it.
How we measured it
Definitions, sources and the limits of the data
A real option
A provider offering 100 Mbps down and 20 up or better via cable, fiber or licensed fixed wireless at that exact address, per FCC Broadband Data Collection filings for 31 December 2025. Satellite, mobile, unlicensed and LBR fixed wireless are not counted. Filings marked business-only, about nine percent of all records, are excluded, so every figure describes service available to households. Same definitions as our metro competition ranking.
Served alone, contested
An operator serves an address alone when it is the only company offering a real option there by cable or fiber. That address is contested when a different company offers fixed wireless at 100/20 or better. Counted per address, never per filing.
A new competitor
Fixed wireless adds a competitor at an address when it raises the number of distinct companies offering a real option there. A company already serving the address on its own cable or fiber adds nothing by also filing fixed wireless; that happens at a third of one percent of addresses.
Density
2020 Census population divided by land area, at census tract. Tracts are sorted by density and cut into ten groups with equal numbers of addresses. We do not measure density by counting addresses in the FCC data, because those addresses are themselves a product of where networks were built.
Addresses, not households
Every figure counts serviceable locations, which is how operators plan networks. A location in a dense city is often an apartment building. Weighted by housing units instead, the densest tenth of the country looks more competitive, not less: 46 percent of homes with three options rather than 41 percent of addresses.
Naming operators
FCC filings identify a filing entity, not a brand or parent. We built a reviewed crosswalk of 154 brand records covering 87 percent of all filings. Operators are named only where it covers them.
Zero-speed filings
Nine percent of addresses carry fixed-wireless filings that advertise no speed at all, nearly all from national carriers. We count them as adding nothing, and report them separately from filings that advertise a real but slow speed.
What availability is not
A filing says a provider reports it can serve the address. It is not a subscriber, a market share, a capacity figure, a measured speed, or a guarantee the household can order service today. Exposure figures mark where the fight is, not who is winning it.
One point in time
One reconciled data vintage exists, so nothing here is a trend. Fixed-wireless source files are incomplete for CT, DC, HI and RI, but only for the unlicensed and LBR technologies this analysis does not count. Every figure is pinned to one data edition and will not change when the data is refreshed.
Read the metro competition ranking Explore the underlying market data