Fiber Broadband Association Says 11.8 Million New Fiber Passings in 2025

WASHINGTON, Dec. 17, 2025 – Fiber broadband providers passed 11.8 million new locations in 2025, according to a new Fiber Broadband Association report. The group estimated about 84.6 million total homes passed with fiber and nearly 40 million fiber subscribers nationwide.

“After a trough of disappointment for a while 10 years or so, we’ve been on a steady upstream, with one decline in 2020,” said Mike Render, founder of consulting firm RVA, which FBA commissioned for the study. “We’ve made quite a bit of progress.”

Render spoke at an FBA webinar Wednesday.

He said the report drew on Federal Communications Commission data, disclosures from publicly traded ISPs, and surveys of operators and consumers. He said his passing measure only counted homes where service was marketed.

“It’s important to triangulate because no source of data is perfect,” he said. 

Render was optimistic about incentives for future fiber builds. He said the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s tax reform made it easier for companies to write off investments, likely incentivizing more new network construction, and billions in public investment from programs like BEAD and RDOF would drive more.

Still, a pace much higher than 12 million new passings annually will be hard to achieve, he said. At some point the available workforce and permitting processes will become barriers to increasing the pace of deployment.

Asked whether huge demand for fiber from AI companies could significantly affect the supply chain in 2026, Render wasn’t too worried. Some fiber manufacturers have mentioned the issue in earrings calls this year, Light Reading reported last week.

“It could be a concern,” he said. “I know people are trying to increase cable production. Glass production is harder to increase quickly, but there is a lot of production in the US and throughout the world.”

Ookla Fixed Wireless Access study

Separately, Ookla found median download speeds of the three major carriers’ fixed wireless access (FWA) services had so far decreased this year.

Whether that’s from networks finally getting congested as millions of new customers are added, or simply trees having more leaves in the middle of the year, is hard to say, Ookla Editorial Director Sue Marek wrote.

“The impact of foliage on FWA speeds is common knowledge among RF engineers. The signal loss typically occurs during the spring and summer months (Q2 and Q3) when deciduous trees are filled with dense leaves that can weaken FWA signals,” she wrote in a Monday report.

“However, network congestion could also be a factor. There have long been concerns from the investment community and others about traffic from FWA subscribers causing congestion and impacting the performance of both mobile and FWA customers because the same 5G spectrum is being used to deliver both services.”

MoffettNathanson estimated recently that fixed wireless accounts for a significant portion of the traffic on T-Mobile and Verizon networks. 

Still, New Street Research analysts estimate the carriers have enough spectrum capacity to support about 32.4 million fixed wireless subscribers, compared to the roughly 15 million they have between them. The FCC is also going to auction off upper C-band spectrum in the coming years, which the firm said could add the capacity for another few million fixed wireless customers.