Greenfield fiber focus
WOW! continues to pursue its Greenfield fiber build initiative. During the quarter, it spent $14.1 million on Greenfields and remains on track to spend between $60 million and $70 million in 2025.
As of the end of June, WOW!’s 2025 Edge-out projects passed 5,000 new homes and 1,400 subscribers, representing a 28% penetration rate. The 2024 Edge-out projects passed 8,300 new homes and 3,800 subscribers, which represents a 45.8 % penetration rate. The 2023 Edge-out projects passed 18,500 new homes and 5,800 subscribers, which represents a 31.4% penetration rate.
In the second quarter, WOW! spent $14.1 million on Greenfields and remains on track to spend between $60 million and $70 million in 2025.
“Momentum in our greenfield expansion efforts further drove growth in our footprint, all while maintaining a penetration rate of 16% in our greenfield market,” Elder said.
The majority of WOW!’s 91,000 fiber broadband locations are mainly in the Greenfield markets, with some in its legacy markets.
All of those are fiber-to-the-home. And then we also have some within our legacy footprint as well, but the bulk of them are in our greenfield markets.
“Our success in these markets includes strong sell-in in the higher speed tiers, which demonstrates the high quality and value of the product we're bringing to market,” Elder said. “The 2025 edge-out vintage passed an additional 3,500 new homes in the second quarter, bringing the total vintage to 5,000 homes while growing penetration to 28%.”
Subscriber shifts
While WOW! has set a path for future growth with its fiber broadband strategy, the cable MSO still had to battle broadband losses during the second quarter.
It lost 3,900 broadband subscribers during the quarter. However, WOW! did add 2,300 broadband subscribers in its greenfield markets and 1,100 in its Edge-Out expansion markets, which Elder said, “partially offset the drop in our legacy footprint.”
WOW! has implemented various products and promotions to enhance its broadband subscriber base in its legacy and Greenfield expansion markets, including complementary speed upgrades and our simplified pricing plans, which include an optional price lock, modem included, no data caps, and no contract.
“We are now seeing the growth of subscribers in our greenfield markets, coupled with improving subscriber dynamics in our legacy markets, pushing us significantly closer to hitting the inflection point where our net adds return to positive,” Elder said.
Due to a rate increase that went into effect on June 1, as well as demand for higher speed tiers, ARPU rose 4.9% year-over-year to $73.50.
Elder said that the “demand for higher speed tiers, which continues to grow with 76% of HSD-only new connects purchasing 500 Mbps or higher during the second quarter, a 4% increase year-over-year.”
She added that “we continue to see the success of our simplified pricing strategy, which is showing particular strength in our greenfield market.”
However, WOW! like the rest of the cable industry continues to weather the decline storm in its traditional video business, which declined further during the quarter and has now dropped to 42,500 subscribers, a 40.6% decrease from the same period last year.
“We anticipate this trend will continue as we transition to YouTube TV to align our total product offering with current market trends,” Elder said.
Service declines impact revenues
During the second quarter, WOW!’s revenues were affected by declines across its three main product lines—broadband, telephony and video.
WOW’s total second-quarter revenue dipped 9.2% to $144.2 million as video and telephony revenue dropped 39.9% and 10.3%, respectively, in addition to the slight decline in HSD revenue during the quarter.
In the second quarter, WOW! reported $104.8 million in high-speed data (HSD) broadband revenue, which decreased 0.2% year-over-year.
John Rego, CFO of WOW!, said the HSD revenue decline “is largely reflecting the decrease in HSD subscribers.”
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