Lumen Technologies offered a glimpse of how its ambitious fiber-to-the-home expansion is coming along, revealing projects to lay thousands of miles of new fiber are underway in 20 markets.
The operator previously laid out plans to deliver its residential Quantum Fiber service to a total of 12 million locations over the coming years and pass 1 million new sites by the end of 2022. It added 205,000 new locations in Q2, with 185,000 of those located within the 16-state footprint it plans to retain once its sale of ILEC assets to Apollo management closes later this year. All told, it ended Q2 with 3.1 million fiber enabled locations, with 2.9 million of those in its retained footprint.
Until now, the company hasn’t talked much about where exactly it is building. But it shed some light on the subject this week, noting deployments are underway in 12 states. These include Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Washington.
In Arizona, Lumen said it is building out the cities of Phoenix, Mesa, Scottsdale and Tuscon. It noted it also recently received an award from the Arizona Broadband Development Grant Program which will help it bring service to Gila Bend on the outskirts of Phoenix. Though the state didn’t announce individual totals for the grants awarded by the program, Lumen’s was one of six grants provided for urban areas which collectively totaled $23.6 million.
Target markets in other states include Aurora, Colorado Springs and Denver, Colorado; Cape Coral, Fort Myers and Ocala, Florida, as well as unnamed cities in the central part of the state; Ada County, Idaho, which is home to the city of Boise; Cedar Rapids, Des Moines and West Des Moines in Iowa; Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota; Ogden, Salt Lake City and St. George, Utah; and Bellingham, Olympia, Seattle, Spokane and Tacoma, Washington.
In Iowa, Lumen will be squaring off with Google Fiber and cable operator Mediacom in Des Moines and West Des Moines. Google Fiber also has a presence in Salt Lake City, with plans to expand further into surrounding communities. Additionally, Google Fiber this week announced plans to expand into five new states, including Arizona, Colorado and Idaho. In Arizona, it has already inked a deal to build out its service in Mesa, a Phoenix suburb.
Lumen could also run into Ziply Fiber, which has been working in areas just north of Seattle and is planning to cover more than 80% of its four-state footprint with fiber within three years. Frontier Communications also has fiber assets in the Seattle area and in parts of Florida primarily along the west coast from Tampa down to North Port just north of Cape Coral, a map from BroadbandNow showed. Meanwhile, WideOpenWest (WOW!) has announced plans to build greenfield fiber in central Florida’s Orange and Seminole counties.