Shentel’s commercial and residential fiber drove a shift in its revenue mix

Working through the backlog

Shentel continued to make progress with commercial sales in the fourth quarter, reporting that incremental monthly bookings exceeded 155,000, in line with the results reported at the end of 2024.

Following a period of record bookings in the first half of 2025, second-half bookings increased by almost 9% compared to the second half of 2024.

“We’re seeing strong performance across a broad and diverse customer base, including wireless carriers, mid-market and enterprise customers, wholesale partners, educational institutions, and state and local governments,” McKay said.

During the quarter, Shentel’s service delivery team generated $191,000 in new monthly revenue, declining from $216,000 sequentially.  

“Our monthly revenue was down modestly as we continue to work through the backlog and move bookings to revenue more quickly,” McKay said.

He added that “average monthly compression and disconnect churn remained very low at 0.6% in the fourth quarter, driven by exceptional support from our network operations center and sales team.”

Weathering business customer dynamics

Like other providers serving business customers, Shentel also must face the typical dynamics of the time it takes for network installation and billing for services

While business passings account for about 8% of Shentel’s total passings, these locations show a slower penetration ramp than residential passings.

Still, McKay noted that business customers generate data ARPU that is over 40% higher than residential customers.

“Due to the slower business ramp, cohorts with a higher concentration of business passings can show lower penetration,” he said. “This dynamic is evident in the Q4 2023, Q1 and Q4 2024, and Q1 2025 cohorts, which have a significantly higher mix of business passings than other cohorts.”

Another challenge for Shentel when it wins a new commercial customer is waiting for the contracts to end.

“We must wait for that contract to roll off,” McKay said. “And in some markets, there are actually multiple providers going after business customers.”

He added that we “expect terminal penetration on business customers to be lower than residential.”

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