Fiber Deployments Hit Record Levels, but 2025 Was a Challenging Year: FBA
While fiber deployments hit record levels in 2025, the year also presented numerous problems, said Ash Brown, chair of the Fiber Broadband Association board, during the group's webinar Wednesday. Brown spoke with association CEO Gary Bolton, who agreed that 2025 wasn’t easy for the fiber industry. Both said fiber will be critical as AI becomes more a part of daily life.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
Bolton said he spent the first quarter of the year in Washington, D.C., “trying to figure out every executive order that was flying out.” BEAD was effectively delayed until 2026, but despite the lack of funding from the program, the level of fiber deployment was “amazing.”
In 2025, “there were certainly moments when we were all disappointed,” Brown said. “It was a very challenging year.” The fiber industry provided service to an additional 11.8 million locations in 2025, she said, with fiber now available to more than 98 million homes in the U.S. “When you look at the progress we have made over the course of the past five years, the past 10 years, it's incredible progress.”
AI is “such a buzzword” for the Trump administration, Brown said, adding that there are societal “threats” from the technology and confusion about "what it all means." But AI and data centers require fiber because they depend on its redundancy, low latency, capacity and speed, she said. “Fiber is going to continue to be a driver for now” and “for future generations.”
Industry needs to continue to “educate and advocate around the value of fiber,” Brown argued, and work also remains to speed deployment and eliminate barriers. “That comes with heavy work around policy,” she said. “We have more work to do around permitting and rights of way.” In addition, Brown said that as FBA chair, she wants to focus on workforce development, while the group needs to deliver quality research to members.
Bolton said getting more technicians in the field and speeding up deployments will be critical to move beyond 12 million homes passed per year as the “high-water mark” for deployment. FBA has been working with NTIA to use non-deployment BEAD funds to accelerate and streamline permitting, he said. The association is looking at ways to ensure that companies don’t have to do environmental reviews for the same roadway easement “over and over and over again.” There are many areas for potential improvements in coordination between government agencies, he said. “There’s a great opportunity.”
In a year-end report to FBA members, Bolton said 2026 will be “pivotal ... marked by midterm elections and early presidential campaigns.” The group is “strategically positioned to capitalize on the growing recognition of fiber as essential infrastructure, particularly in the context” of AI and “next-generation technologies.” The report noted recent research that the “introduction of a second fiber provider in a community raises the cumulative fiber take rate to 61%.” It also said 2025 saw a record number of fiber broadband providers, with smaller, non-Tier 1 operators “accounting for 40% of total fiber deployments.”