Windstream shed some light on its full year 2021 performance, announcing its Kinetic brand added more than 55,000 broadband customers last year.
As a private company, Windstream does not host public earnings calls. However, it does release quarterly updates containing select metrics. The company previously said it added 13,000 broadband subs in Q1 and 15,000 in Q3. A company representative told Fierce it added 9,500 in Q2 and 17,300 in Q4. It had a total of 1.164 million broadband customers as of the end of 2021, the representative said.
The full year net add figure was down slightly from the 60,000 new customers Windstream added in 2020.
Windstream also expanded the reach of its fiber-based gigabit services, delivering these to 523,000 new locations in 2021 to reach a total of 1.1 million. That figure represents approximately 20% of its overall footprint and is up from a total of 589,000 gigabit-enabled locations at the end of 2020.
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Jeff Small, president of Windstream’s Kinetic business, recently told Fierce it plans to push fiber to another 400,000 locations in 2022 to address an additional 10% of its footprint. It will likely continue deployments at a slightly slower pace for the following three years, he added.
The expansion work is part of a previously announced five-year, $2 billion project to push broadband to more rural markets across its 18-state footprint, which began last year.
“When we announced our aggressive $2 billion investment in fiber deployment, we knew that our customers both wanted and needed this technology,” Small said in a statement. “Our network investments, supported by our best-of-breed customer service, are driving strong customer growth.”
RELATED: Windstream wants 1,000 new workers to fuel fiber build
In May, Windstream announced plans to onboard 1,000 new engineering and construction workers to help with the expansion project. At that time, hiring was expected to begin in Q4. In its year-end 2021 update, the company said the hiring process is “nearly complete.”
This story has been updated to include Q2, Q4 and full year 2021 subscriber figures provided by a Windstream representative.