Broadband in America Report: August 2026 Edition

This monthly installment of the Broadband in America Report builds on the prior semiannual Fixed Broadband Competition Focus edition, which found that fiber growth is increasingly driven by overbuild rather than footprint extension, that large providers are pivoting sharply toward competitive overbuild amid a wave of merger and acquisition activity, and that rural expansion remains dependent on public subsidy support. Drawing on historical build activity, location density, competition metrics, and demographics, the Fiber Forecast Model assigns each unserved location a likelihood score reflecting the model’s confidence that a carrier will deploy fiber there within the next six-month timestep. Depending on carrier aggressiveness, the Fiber Forecast Model estimates between 2.1 and 6.7 million newly fiber-covered locations nationwide over the next six months: a more than threefold spread showing how much near-term fiber growth now hinges on discretionary capital allocation rather than remaining unserved demand. The Fiber Forecast Model identifies AT&T, regional ISPs and mid-sized providers as the leading drivers of near-term deployment, with Florida, Texas, Ohio, Illinois and Georgia emerging as the top growth states: high-growth, mixed-density markets where overbuild economics work best.