On December 13, the Fiber Broadband Association (FBA) filed a brief report with the FCC, "The State of the North American Fiber Deployment." As observed in the report, from September 2023 to September 2024, all-fiber broadband network availability to U.S. households climbed 13% to 76.5 million households. During that period, there reportedly was a record annual growth in fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), totaling 10.3 million households. Additionally, all-fiber availability has grown from less than 40% of households in 2020 to almost 60% today. The report acknowledges the significant buildout efforts by several providers, including AT&T, which reportedly plans to reach 50 million households with fiber by the end of 2029.
The 13% year-to-year fiber passing figure is remarkable and benefits consumers with access to significantly improved broadband Internet service capabilities compared to older-generation networks. It is widely acknowledged that fiber broadband networks are capacious and readily capable of delivering gigabit download speeds that easily meet the FCC's current benchmarks for defining broadband Internet services (currently 100 Mbps upload/20 Mbps download).
FBA filed the report in the FCC's proceeding for the forthcoming 2024 Communications Marketplace Competition report, due by the end of this year. In June of this year, the Free State Foundation filed public comments in the Commission's proceeding, and in July, FSF filed reply comments. In those comments, FSF President Randolph May and I argued that there is compelling evidence that the broadband market is effectively competitive. The report filed by FBA provides further confirming evidence for FSF's view.
Credit goes to the super-informed and knowledgeable Ted Hearn of Policyband for calling attention to FBA's filing.
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