As Tier 1 and Tier 2 operators rapidly expand fiber broadband availability, a new joint report from the Fiber Broadband Association and RVA notes that fiber could surpass cable as the dominant broadband platform by 2028.
According to the new study, fiber broadband deployments reached 11.8 million U.S. homes passed in 2025 alone, totaling 98.3 million FTTH passings when including homes with multiple passings.
Another notable market is Canada, which had a total of 14.5 million fiber passings – nearly 75% of Canadian households.
The joint survey results revealed that the U.S. is well on its way to achieving fiber availability goals, with fiber broadband now serving over 60% of U.S. households and on track to overtake cable and other technologies as the dominant U.S. delivery platform as early as 2028.
Despite this progress, there’s plenty of room for further growth. There are 60 million remaining potential first-time fiber passings, and 84% of potential second- and third-passings remain untapped, creating opportunities for overbuilding and competitive fiber deployments.
However, fiber passing is not the only notable metric for FTTH.
The survey data indicate that average take rates climbed to 46.5% for primary passings. When a secondary provider enters a fiber market, the total FTTH take rate jumps to about 61%, demonstrating that fiber-to-fiber competition increases adoption.
“Competition among fiber providers has intensified, and the data shows that customer experience is now a top defining factor separating market leaders from the rest,” said Mike Render, Founder and CEO at RVA. Consumers consistently rate fiber highest across every performance category, and that preference is accelerating adoption. Advantages of fiber speed, latency, and jitter are also evident in survey-based speed tests.
Render added that “as more providers enter the market and expand their networks, we expect this momentum to continue and further solidify fiber as the premier broadband technology in the United States.”
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