TDS Telecommunications LLC is on track to meet its operational and financial goals for the year. The telecommunications company deployed 25,000 marketable fibre service addresses in the quarter and remains confident it will reach 175,000 by year-end.
Senior vice president of finance and CFO Michelle Brukwicki updated the company’s progress on its fibre expansion programme, a multi-year journey that includes fibre construction in about 100 communities primarily in the Pacific Northwest and Wisconsin. TDS is targeting 1.2 million marketable fibre service addresses by 2026; it ended the quarter with 607,000. The company is also targeting 60% of total service addresses to be served by fibre by 2026; it ended the quarter with 40%. And the company plans to offer speeds of 1Gig or higher to at least 80% of its footprint by 2026; it finished the quarter with 67% at Gig speeds.
“We are pleased with the pace and progress of our fibre builds and our expansion results so far,” says Brukwicki. “We’ve been scaling up our service address deployment since we launched the programme and have a repeatable process in place as we expand it.”
TDS continues to address the broadband needs of its most rural markets as well. It is upgrading copper networks with support from state broadband grant programmes and by meeting its obligations under the federal A-CAM programme, which the company expects the FCC to extend.
“We are very enthusiastic about an A-CAM extension,” says Brukwicki. “It would provide an additional 6 years of support for speeds of 100 down and 20 up, the same speeds as BEAD, a Broadband Equity, Access and Development programme.” The company believes that extending the A-CAM programme first and then pursuing BEAD would provide the fastest path for TDS to take fibre deeper into its communities.
The company shared its broadband investments continue to drive positive results. TDS experienced a 4% increase year over year in total broadband residential connections and is seeing a demand for faster broadband speeds with 72% of customers taking 100Mbps or greater, up from 67% a year ago. In some markets, TDS is now offering 8 Gig speeds. Total residential broadband revenue increased 8% while total revenues increased 1%. Price increases and overall product mix, partially offset by promotions, drove a 4% increase in average residential revenue per connection.
TDS’ 2023 guidance remains unchanged with forecasted revenues of $1.03 billion (€0.95 billion) to $1.06 billion (€0.97 billion). This reflects the goal of top-line growth driven by continued improvements in residential revenues across all markets, offsetting declines in commercial and wholesale revenues. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $260 (€238.89) to $290 million (€266.45 million); capital expenditures are expected to be between $500 (€459.40) and $550 million (€505.34 million) in 2023. Both metrics reflect continued upfront spending to support the company’s fibre expansion programme.
For more information please visit the TDS newsroom here or contact Kit Beyer.
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