Where will net adds come from once there’s Internet for All?

President Joe Biden’s administration has set an ambitious goal to deliver Internet for All using $42.5 billion in funding from the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. It’s not entirely clear how realistic that goal is. But in an environment where operators have turned to expansions in un- and underserved areas to drive net additions due to low move activity, it’s worth asking what will happen to the market once every household in the country is connected. MoffettNathanson's Craig Moffett said that the growth rate in broadband has already slowed dramatically. And in a post-BEAD world, “the growth rate should slow to something close to the rate of new household formation in the [US], which has historically been less than 1% per year.” Beyond that, “everything else will be a battle for market share gains,” he said. Moffett added a look at mature broadband markets which are already fully penetrated offers a “pretty good preview for what the whole country will look like.” While cable and fiber players have tried to paint fixed wireless as a term-limited solution due to spectrum capacity constraints, Recon Analytics founder Roger Entner said operators like Verizon and T-Mobile which have millimeter wave assets will remain competitive even in urban areas. Moffett flagged satellite TV as a potential loser, because "The DBS [direct broadcast satellite] operators have increasingly focused on rural customers for whom cord-cutting isn’t an option. When wired broadband comes to rural America, the satellite operators won’t just have to compete against cable, they’ll also have to compete against Netflix and Hulu, as well,” he explained. Ultimately, Moffett concludes that “There’s no reason to think that growth will reaccelerate [post-Covid] given that [the U.S. broadband market] is that much closer to full saturation.”