Adtran’s CEO says carriers are taking a managed optical fiber network (MOFN) position
Key Highlights
- Adtran is targeting the Managed Optical Fiber Network (MOFN) market, which offers scalable, secure fiber infrastructure for large enterprises and hyperscalers.
- The company reports increased customer activity in MOFN planning, supported by ongoing fiber investments and network upgrades across regions.
- European service providers are replacing Huawei equipment due to security concerns, creating new opportunities for Adtran in network upgrades.
- Data center interconnect (DCI) and automation are key growth areas, with rising demand for high-capacity, intelligent fiber solutions.
- Adtran’s optical networking revenue grew 33% year-over-year, driven by cloud and enterprise customer expansion, reflecting market trends toward automation and capacity upgrades.
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Adtran is targeting the emerging Managed Optical Fiber Network (MOFN) opportunity — a managed service that carriers are offering to enterprises and hyperscalers seeking high-bandwidth without the headache of overseeing network connectivity.
MOFN is a dedicated, high-capacity, and secure fiber infrastructure built and operated by a third-party provider, offering a hybrid between dark fiber and managed waves.
Designed for enterprises and hyperscalers, MOFNs provide, monitor, and maintain optical equipment and fiber, enabling fast, scalable connectivity without the burden of managing physical infrastructure.
Adtran is hardly alone in its MOFN desires. Ciena, one of Adtran’s optical networking rivals, is seeing broad demand from service providers, submarine cable operators and hyperscalers and expects it to be a contributor to its overall service provider growth.
Speaking to investors during its fourth-quarter earnings call, Tom Stanton, CEO of Adtran, said it is seeing more of its service provider customers craft their own MOFN plans.
“We talked about that in the last couple of conference calls, how we were starting to see some of the carriers position themselves to be able to do MOFN,” he said. “That's just a continuing, ongoing kind of upgrade cyclical thing that's adding positive momentum to that business.”
Sustained fiber investments
Adtran continues to see what it calls “sustained” fiber investment across its core markets, and U.S. broadband programs and ongoing data center investments are supporting network expansion.
The company also sees an opportunity to bid for service provider business arising from European service providers replacing Huawei equipment in their 5G and core networks, driven by EU-wide security concerns and specific national regulations, particularly in Germany and the UK.
“In Europe, an increased focus on network security and vendor diversification away from higher-risk suppliers is reinforcing upgrade activity across the region,” Stanton said. “These trends are supporting continued demand for upgrades across all three of our product categories.”
At the same time as European network equipment replacement efforts, new customer requirements for the data center market are emerging.
In particular, Data Center Interconnect (DCI), which provides seamless interconnection among multiple data centers, enhancing the performance, reliability, and scalability of modern enterprise and service provider networks, continues to grow. Fiber wholesale providers are offering a mix of dark fiber and managed services with automated capabilities.
“Network requirements continue to evolve,” Stanton said. “Across data centers, from the data center to the customer edge, capacity demands are increasing. Service providers, cloud providers and enterprises are pairing high-capacity fiber networks with automation and software to streamline operations.”
He added that “while this is still an emergency contributor to our revenue, it reinforces the market's longer-term direction towards more intelligence and more automation.”
Optical leads revenues
Optical Networking Solutions led Adtran’s fourth quarter revenue mix, growing 33% year over year, driven by strong sales to cloud providers and enterprise customers.
The increase in Optical Networking Solutions revenue contributed to enterprise and cloud providers, accounting for 25% of its revenue in the fourth quarter and 21% for the full year of 2025.
“These results reinforce a trend we are seeing: cloud providers expanding data center capacity and large enterprises upgrading their optical networks,” Stanton said.
He added that “we continued to broaden our optical customer base as we saw solid activity across service providers, cloud providers, enterprises, and public networks, reflecting the flexibility of our optical platforms across different use cases.”
Supported by continued investment in fiber access across U.S. and European operators, Adtran’s Access & Aggregation revenue grew 9% year-over-year and 6% sequentially as its service provider customers conducted expansion projects and network upgrades.
Adtran also saw growth in Subscriber Solutions, with revenue growing 17% year-over-year and 3% sequentially.
Stanton said Subscriber Solutions growth was “driven by demand for our residential fiber CPE as customers continue to connect more subscribers,” and the “revenue in this category continues to be generated by a diverse mix of residential, enterprise, and wholesale service offerings.”
Finally, Adtran’s software solutions serve over 1,000 carrier customers across three of its product categories, automating everything from optical networks to in-home subscribers' experiences. These customers include nearly 500 service providers adopting Adtran’s Mosaic One platform and over 100 service providers deploying its recently introduced Intellifi cloud-managed Wi-Fi solutions.
Adtran is also advancing its Agentic AI platform, with numerous Mosaic One Clarity customer trials underway ahead of an official launch later this year.
“As demand for AI-driven automation grows, we see this application suite as an important addition to our software capabilities,” Stanton said.
Adtran’s fourth quarter revenues were $291.6 million, up 20.1% year-over-year and sequential growth of over 4%, surpassing the high end of its original guidance.
“This marks the sixth consecutive quarter of sequential growth and the fifth consecutive quarter of year-over-year improvement, reinforcing the strength of our company and our key markets,” Stanton said.
For the first quarter of 2026, Adtran expects revenue to be within the range of $275 million to $295 million.
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Sean Buckley
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