The US Fiber Build Is Shifting to Large Builders, Cable Markets and Rural Areas

At the end of 2023, 69.8 million US homes could order fiber, 42.8% of the total. Two years later the figure was 90.7 million, or 55.9%. Builders added 10.6 million fiber homes in 2024 and 10.3 million in 2025, and every half-year added between 4.6 million and 5.8 million.

Rural homes gained faster in share: from 33.1% with fiber to 48.9%, against 45.6% to 57.9% in cities and suburbs. Part of the last rural step comes from the FCC’s count of rural homes, which fell by 1.3 million in the December 2025 filing.

That leaves 71.7 million homes without fiber. At the pace of the last two years, that is about 7 years of building. Some of those homes will never get fiber, so the real runway is shorter.

Cite this chart: G2M Insights, "The US Fiber Build Is Shifting to Large Builders, Cable Markets and Rural Areas," G2M Communications Research, edition fiber-build-2025-12-v1, g2m.ai/research/communications/us-fiber-build.

Plan on fiber reaching most of your market within your current planning cycle. The pace has held for two years, and nothing in the filings shows it slowing.

The telcos and cable companies accounted for all of the acceleration. The national telcos, AT&T and Verizon, added fiber at 2.8 million addresses in 2025, up from 1.9 million. Regional telcos such as Brightspeed, Frontier and Windstream added 2.8 million, up from 2.3 million, and cable companies 2.3 million, up from 1.7 million. Together they built 62% of the new fiber in 2025, up from 54%.

Everyone else held steady. Builders backed by outside capital, including the wireless carriers’ fiber ventures, added about 2.3 million addresses in each year, and some 1,600 smaller builders about 2.0 million. Co-ops, municipal networks and fixed wireless companies building fiber added 0.5 million, down from 0.9 million.

Cite this chart: G2M Insights, "The US Fiber Build Is Shifting to Large Builders, Cable Markets and Rural Areas," G2M Communications Research, edition fiber-build-2025-12-v1, g2m.ai/research/communications/us-fiber-build.

The acceleration is coming from companies with large existing networks to upgrade and the balance sheets to do it. Expect the next fiber in your market to come from a telco or cable company you already know.

In June 2025, 10.4 million residential addresses could choose between two or more fiber companies, 16.1% of fiber addresses. By December, 12.5 million could, or 17.9%. That is 2.0 million more addresses with a second fiber option in six months, in a period when the number of fiber addresses grew by 4.7 million. About 1.1 million addresses now have three.

Cite this chart: G2M Insights, "The US Fiber Build Is Shifting to Large Builders, Cable Markets and Rural Areas," G2M Communications Research, edition fiber-build-2025-12-v1, g2m.ai/research/communications/us-fiber-build.

If you already serve an area with fiber, plan for a second fiber builder as a realistic case, not a remote one.

At the end of 2025, 44.8 million residential addresses had no fiber. Cable reached 36.9 million of them, 82%. Another 3.6 million had only copper, and 4.3 million had no wired service at all.

So most of the fiber still to be built is a decision to compete with cable, made on commercial terms. The copper still in service shows where the telcos would build it. At addresses without fiber, AT&T offers copper at 11.1 million, and cable is also present at 95% of those.

Cite this chart: G2M Insights, "The US Fiber Build Is Shifting to Large Builders, Cable Markets and Rural Areas," G2M Communications Research, edition fiber-build-2025-12-v1, g2m.ai/research/communications/us-fiber-build.

Ownership has moved since December 2025: Verizon completed its purchase of Frontier in January 2026, AT&T bought Lumen’s consumer fiber business in February 2026 while Lumen kept its copper, and Windstream is now part of Uniti.

If you run a cable network, the large telcos’ copper retirement plans are the best guide to where fiber arrives next. If you build fiber, the remaining private opportunity is mostly cable territory, and should be priced that way.

All 56 states and territories had their BEAD broadband plans approved by August 2026. In the 53 that NTIA has summarized, the plans fund 3.79 million locations, and 2.39 million of them, 63%, get fiber. Low-earth-orbit satellite takes 0.83 million and fixed wireless 0.50 million. The plans commit $18.2 billion of federal money and $11.7 billion of provider match.

Fiber projects account for about $15.5 billion of the federal money and $9.6 billion of the match, and they plan about 406,000 miles of new fiber: 161,000 on poles and 244,000 underground. Almost every fiber project starts in 2026, and 73% of the fiber locations with a stated completion date are due in 2029 or 2030.

Cite this chart: G2M Insights, "The US Fiber Build Is Shifting to Large Builders, Cable Markets and Rural Areas," G2M Communications Research, edition fiber-build-2025-12-v1, g2m.ai/research/communications/us-fiber-build.

* Miles from a version of the state’s plan published before final approval.

Construction crews and materials in BEAD states will be committed from 2026 through 2030. If your build plan relies on the same contractors in those states, secure capacity now.

• Plan on fiber across most of your market. At about 10.5 million homes a year, fiber reaches most US homes within a normal planning cycle.
• Expect the next fiber from a company you know. The telcos and cable companies are the builders speeding up.
• Where you already have fiber, plan for a second. Two million addresses gained a second fiber option in six months.
• Read the remaining build as a cable fight. Most homes without fiber have cable, and telco copper retirement sets the order in which they get it.
• Book rural construction capacity early. BEAD will occupy crews in its states from 2026 to 2030.

These figures are reported availability, not subscribers. They show where fiber can be ordered and who offers it, not who buys it.