AT&T Forms New Fiber Joint Venture with Gigapower, Lumen Assets
Blackrock and a Canadian pension fund will own 50 percent of the open-access JV
WASHINGTON, Oct. 6, 2026 – AT&T is combining its recently acquired Lumen assets with Gigapower, its open-access fiber joint venture, the company said Tuesday.
The wireless carrier would own 50 percent of the JV, with a Blackrock subsidiary and a Canadian pension fund owning the other 50 percent, the companies said in a release.
AT&T said it expected to “receive proceeds” when the deal closed in the first half of 2027, but didn’t say how much.
The Blackrock subsidiary, Global Infrastructure Partners, has already partnered with AT&T on its Gigapower joint venture. That’s also an open-access network with AT&T as the anchor tenant, the same structure the company is now applying to its Lumen assets.
AT&T CEO John Stankey said in a statement the JV was aimed at expanding the company’s fiber service, and thus its bundled fixed and mobile broadband plans, in more places.
“By partnering with leading digital infrastructure investors, we see significant opportunity to strengthen our scale advantage in fiber, broaden availability of our award-winning services and grow our leadership in converged fiber and 5G connectivity,” he said.
AT&T said the new combined joint venture would reach nearly 5 million locations with more than 1 million active subscribers.
Much of that is from the Lumen side, which had 4.3 million passings in May 2025 and 1 million subscribers when the deal closed in February 2026.
AT&T acquired Lumen’s consumer fiber business for $5.75 billion in cash. The company said when the deal was announced it would ultimately seek an investor to form a joint venture with the assets.
Gigapower was formed in 2023 and had aimed for 1.5 million locations by the end of 2025, a goal it appeared to have missed based on the new joint venture’s total passings. AT&T hasn’t disclosed Gigapower-specific metrics.
The unit has been embroiled in litigation with Tilson, a former contractor in multiple states, which blamed its bankruptcy last year on $200 million in unpaid fees from Gigapower, something Gigapower has denied.
Telecom union Communications Workers of America, which represents more than 150,000 AT&T workers, has opposed Gigapower’s use of contract labor.
The Lumen assets will operate in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Washington, AT&T said in its release.
Gigapower will operate in Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and South Carolina, making 16 states in total.
“A key objective of the JV is to enable the planned acceleration of deploying fiber infrastructure by leveraging Gigapower and the established fiber construction engine of Forged Fiber 37,” the AT&T subsidiary that holds the Lumen network, AT&T said in its release.
The carrier said it was aiming to reach more than 60 million fiber locations by the end of 2030. AT&T’s in-house fiber will reach about 50 million of those, the company said, with the JV “expected to be its primary partner for reaching fiber locations outside of its traditional service areas.”
BNP Paribas analyst Sam McHugh said in an investor note that for the JV to hit 10 million locations by the end of 2030, the build pace at Lumen and Gigapower would have to double.
He noted Lumen had been averaging 450,000 new locations per year before the acquisition, and Tuesday releases implied a pace of fewer than 250,000 at Gigapower.
“Presumably the revamped fiber build engine AT&T has been standing up for the Lumen assets will help get them there,” he wrote. “If the ramp is successful, it implies that the pressure these assets had been putting on cable operators for the last four years will double over the next four years.”
The Canadian pension fund involved in the new JV was Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments). The company is owned by the Canadian government, but says it is not a sovereign wealth fund because it isn’t directly managed by the government and doesn't administer public funds.
