January 2026 Vol. 81 No. 1
Features
Fiber construction market looks very strong through 2030
Michael C. Render, RVA LLC
According to research conducted by RVA for the Fiber Broadband Association (FBA) and data from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), 2025 marked a record year for fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) deployment. During this period, 11.8 million additional homes were passed and became eligible for consumer marketing.
Currently, 84.5 million U.S. residences have access to fiber service, representing just over 60 percent of all households. Of these, approximately 16 percent are served by more than one fiber provider, resulting in nearly 100 million total fiber passings nationwide.
In Canada, the number of homes passed now stands at approximately 12.5 million.
The outlook for future FTTH expansion across North America looks extremely bright over the next five years. There are roughly 60 million homes yet to be passed with at least one fiber connection and an estimated 69 million homes positioned for an additional passing, yielding a total available market of 129 million. Furthermore, renewed momentum in new home construction may contribute to continued growth in fiber availability.
It is projected that more than 65 percent of this construction will be underground, with the potential for an even higher percentage, due to extended timelines and increased costs associated with permitting and overhead pole attachments. In certain instances, fiber providers may also be required to replace utility poles during the course of aerial construction.
Growth factors
Several factors account for the notable expansion of fiber infrastructure. The overall demand for reliable, high-quality residential Internet service continues to rise. According to RVA consumer research, households increasingly recognize the growing significance of Internet connectivity in their daily lives. Data from Open Vault, an organization specializing in Internet traffic analysis, indicates that the average household now consumes and uploads over 600 GB of data each month, a figure expected to grow further as adoption of artificial intelligence applications accelerates.
Additionally, fiber technology consistently demonstrates clear advantages over other broadband solutions. Speed and latency assessments performed during surveys, alongside direct consumer feedback, routinely highlight fiber's superior performance. A majority of Internet users now regard fiber as the superior method for delivering Internet service.
Further, most internet service providers and investors are strongly supporting fiber infrastructure and stepping up efforts to expand it, striving to be the first to deliver fiber whenever possible. The provider that deploys fiber first tends to gain loyal customers more quickly.
Government policies are also accelerating these projects. The 2025 tax bill is driving greater enthusiasm for building fiber networks, as it allows companies to write off capital expenses through 100-percent bonus depreciation, increasing cash flow and encouraging further investment.
Also, after years of postponement and despite reduced funding for fiber, BEAD (Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment) awards are now being granted. Even though subsidies have decreased under the current administration, and more support is being given to low-earth orbit satellite services, it is still significant. The private sector is contributing about 60 percent of matching funds for BEAD fiber projects. This results in the average BEAD-funded fiber build stretching around 900 feet per home, which is much longer than typical urban or suburban fiber installations.
The BEAD program funds supplement other federal programs like ARDF that continue to distribute resources.
What lies ahead
So, what does this access network activity mean to the underground construction industry? A potential perfect storm of activity – with likely record activity.
On the other hand, it is likely that various constraints will cap some of this potential activity and result in an increased but more “plateaued” build over a longer period of years.
Potential constraints include permitting bottlenecks; workforce constraints, such as fiber splicing and underground construction workforce; construction equipment shortages and materials constraints such as fiber cable, electronics or other materials.
Moving beyond the construction of access networks, other fiber activity is also strong. One of the most important segments is fiber supporting data centers. While news opinions constantly note the great need for energy, water and land to support this effort, more fiber capacity is another key need. More fiber availability is required on existing routes and, of course, for new routes. Each new data center has to have three to four unique routes to increase redundancy and help ensure uptime. In addition, more direct long-haul routes are also needed, both for capacity and decreased latency in the network.
According to a recent FBA paper, RVA predicts that over the next five years, there will be demand for 92,000 new or upgraded route miles of fiber (amounting to 213 million fiber miles when accounting for multiple strands per cable).
All this expansion is in addition to ongoing fiber construction projects supporting macro cell towers, small cells, highway utility relocations and responses to weather or disaster events.
The market for underground fiber construction is expected to be very robust during the coming five years, barring economic or geopolitical upheaval. This will lead to very strong demand for HDD underground construction, as well as trenching, plowing and micro trenching.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
RVA, (918)-592-3100, rvallc.com
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