T-Mobile expands FTTH footprint via 50-50 JVs with Oak Hill Capital and Wren House
T-Mobile US is expanding its fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) footprint by investing ~$2.7 billion in two new 50-50 joint ventures (JVs) with Oak Hill Capital ($2 billion for GoNetspeed and Greenlight Networks) and Wren House ($700 million for i3 Broadband). These partnerships aim to pass around 1.8 million homes, largely in the northeastern U.S., accelerating T-Mobile’s fixed broadband expansion alongside their 5G network. Those deals are expected to close in the first half of 2027. T-Mobile, which markets fiber services under the brand name “T-Fiber,” said the deals are part of a plan to serve 18 million to 19 million total broadband customers – including 3 million to 4 million fiber customers – by the end of 2030.
- GoNetspeed offers voice and broadband services to residential and business customers (including multiple-dwelling units, or MDUs) in parts of Alabama, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont, with plans to light up networks in cities in New Jersey and Rhode Island. GoNetspeed sells a handful of fiber-fed broadband tiers up to 6 Gbit/s and offers DSL in some areas.
- Greenlight Networks, founded in 2011, supports speeds up to 10 Gbit/s for residential and business customers in New York (Rochester, Buffalo, Binghamton, Capital Region and Hudson Valley), Pennsylvania (Scranton, Wilkes-Barre and Lehigh Valley), and Baltimore, Maryland. It serves about 225,000 homes and nearly 10,000 small businesses.
- i3 Broadband serves parts of Illinois and Missouri with broadband and voice services.
T-Mobile said GoNetspeed and Greenlight are expected to pass a combined 1.3 million households by the end of 2026, with i3 Broadband expected to pass roughly 500,000 households by that time. As it is with T-Mobile’s prior fiber JVs, the service providers involved in this new pair of transactions will operate under wholesale models that enable T-Mobile to offer “simple” plans with no annual service contracts.
- Target: ~1.8 million new homes passed, primarily in the Northeast.
- Partners: Joint ventures with investment firms Oak Hill Capital and Wren House.
- Strategic Goal: Deepen fiber footprint to support a target of 18-19 million broadband customers by 2030, with 3-4 million on fiber.
- Starlink Business Backup: T-Mobile is introducing a Starlink-powered backup option to provide comprehensive, resilient connectivity for business customers, enhancing their “SuperBroadband” offerings.
- Broadband Strategy: This move follows earlier 2025 moves, including the joint venture with EQT to acquire Lumos and the takeover of Metronet, strengthening T-Mobile’s position as a major fiber competitor.
Image Credit: Panther Media GmbH/Alamy Stock Photo
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New Street Research analysts David Barden and Vikash Harlalka (via Light Reading) said GoNetspeed passed about 770,000 locations in June 2025, with 725,000 of them passed with fiber, and the rest passed by copper and hybrid fiber/coax (HFC). They also estimate that Greenlight passed about 330,000 locations and i3 Broadband passed roughly 370,000 with fiber as of June 2025. Combined, the three operators involved in the proposed T-Mobile JVs pass nearly 1.5 million total locations, including 1.4 million fiber locations, according to NSR.
Based on an assumption that each fiber network operator has achieved penetration levels of about 25%, New Street said this implies that the Oak Hill JV has about 275,000 customers while the Wren House JV has about 75,000. At that level, they said that means T-Mobile is paying about $725 million for customers from the Oak Hill JV and $250 million for customers from the Wren House JV. The New Street analysts said today’s announcement shows that T-Mobile continues to have interest in acquiring “pure-play fiber operators.” As such, they also believe that the odds of a reported T-Mobile-Uniti deal have dropped.
The analysts also believe that the new fiber-focused JVs will also lower the odds of a potential combination with a major US cable operators such as Charter Communications. “A larger fiber footprint also makes it more difficult to get a deal approved by regulators,” they explained.
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Even with the two new JV’s, T-Mobile’s fiber footprint will still be dwarfed by those of AT&T and Verizon,
- AT&T is targeting a 60 million fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) footprint by 2030, leveraging joint ventures to accelerate deployment.
- Verizon, following acquisitions of Frontier and Eaton Fiber, projects 32 million fiber passings by 2026, with plans to reach 40–50 million via further partnerships and inorganic growth. Verizon, which also struck a deal to acquire Eaton Fiber last fall, is on track to end 2026 with more than 32 million fiber passings. CEO Dan Schulman reiterated that Verizon plans to broaden its fiber footprint to 40 million-50 million “over the medium term,” but did not provide a more specific timeframe. “There’s no question that fiber is a key differentiator … against competitors that don’t have it,” Schulman said, noting that the attachment rate of Verizon mobile customers who also get broadband from Verizon is hovering at about 55%.
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References:
https://www.lightreading.com/broadband/t-mobile-s-new-jvs-fixate-on-fiber
https://www.lightreading.com/broadband/verizon-surpasses-6m-fwa-subs-as-priority-shifts-to-fiber
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T-Mobile US -SpaceX/Starlink T-Satellite usage is low:
During T-Mobile US’s earnings call, CEO Srini Gopalan admitted that just under a year after its commercial launch, T-Satellite is experiencing lower-than-predicted usage. However, he put a very positive spin on the situation, insisting that the technology is doing exactly what it was designed for.
“Our partnership with SpaceX is very strong. We’ve worked closely with them to really invent an entire category, and that’s been putting an end to dead zones. We’re pleased with that,” Gopalan said.
“Most of the usage we’re seeing is in national parks and if anything, courtesy of the great network Dr Saw has built, we’re seeing a lot less usage than we were originally thinking,” he admitted, referring to Chief Technology Officer John Saw. “But it’s a great complementary product.”
LEO satellite-based direct-to-cell was always pitched as such. But it’s interesting to hear one of the operators in the vanguard of D2C say that it had expected more, even if the comment was heavily couched as a testament to the quality of its terrestrial network.
Last week Ookla shared data that showed that while the number of direct-to-device users is on the up globally as more operators launch services, the more mature markets, where telcos have started to bill for their offerings, are seeing a decline in usage. The analyst firm named the US and Canada in particular, where T-Mobile and another early-to-market operator Rogers both charge US$10 per month, or thereabouts for D2D.
Ookla added that there could be seasonal factors at play, such as reduced travelling in the winter months, which ties in with Gopalan’s comment on national parks being key usage hubs.
In the UK, where Starlink-powered O2 Satellite launched just two months ago, the number of users is relatively large – 11% of the global total, Ookla disclosed today – but actual usage is low. The service is, as it was pitched, “a fallback service that appears at the edge of terrestrial coverage,” Ookla said.
Network operators could well be as blasé about D2D usage as Gopalan appears to be. The service was always designed to be an add-on and its impact is hard to measure, given that it could well serve as a valuable customer attraction or stickiness tool for certain segments of the population.
https://www.telecoms.com/satellite/t-mobile-us-posts-strong-q1-but-satellite-usage-low