- The above subtitle references one of our big themes of 2022 which we frequently wrote upon. In December, AT&T announced financing that would allow them to add +1.5M more households (passings) to their fiber footprint expansion plans (increasing the footprint to 31.5M households versus the existing footprint of 22.0M). Earlier in the month, Charter (Spectrum) announced that it would be expanding its footprint by +1.2M households in primarily rural areas at a cost of $4B.
- These expansion commitments, in combination with Verizon’s and T-Mobile’s plans for expanding their broadband footprint, will undoubtedly lead to Comcast (Xfinity) also announcing an acceleration in footprint expansion. (T-Mobile added +2M home broadband customers in 2022.) Galvanizing this overbuilding and competitive encroachment are the capabilities of new 5G networks (speed and capacity), the decay of paid TV, and large household migration to newer/smaller markets (pandemic, work-from-home, affordability, reshoring, etc).
- More footprint and new markets require new distribution and in-market branding (i.e., more retail locations). We’ve looked at the footprint and plans for the six major “telcos” and expect them to open over 1,800 new locations over the next three years to a base of 20K location. The vast majority will be in smaller and suburban markets.
- T-Mobile's 2022 retail expansion efforts helped to drive share of visitations, which we've shown below.
