From market saturation concerns to the realities of consolidation and new capital strategies, leading investors and operators explore what’s shaping fibre’s future — and why the mid-market may be where the real action is.

Joshua Forman, Shareholder – Greenberg Traurig (moderator)
Chad Crank, managing director for private equity – Grain Management
Andrej Danis, partner and managing director – Alix Partners
Anton Moldan, senior managing director – Macquarie Asset Management
Paul Gorman, head of global diversified Industries — CIBC Capital Markets
Kanan Joshi, partner, co-head of North America, and head of digital Infrastructure – CVC DIF

The fibre sector has moved from boom-time investment to a more mature, operationally focused phase. Penetration rates are under pressure, and the discussion is shifting to how to scale efficiently, avoid market overlap, and prepare for inevitable consolidation.

Chad Crank, managing director for private equity at Grain Management, set the tone early by highlighting the long list of things that can go wrong in fibre deployments — and how getting most of them right is now table stakes.

“You have to almost get all of them right,” he said, from market selection to boots-on-the-ground marketing. He noted successful examples, like Ritter, where penetration targets of 20% in 12 months and 30% in 18 months were proving achievable.

Andrej Danis, partner and managing director at Alix Partners, supported this view, adding that performance hinges on professionalism and realistic expectations. “You need almost really a professional team doing all of that,” he said, warning that assuming 40% penetration in highly competitive markets was “not really realistic.”

Paul Gorman, head of global diversified Industries at CIBC Capital Markets, stressed the importance of execution in customer acquisition and experience. “If you have any blunders with your service offering or quality of the network, right out of the gate, it kills any momentum you’re going to have.”

Investors are increasingly focused on fundamentals — everything from capex control and customer acquisition to market defensibility — rather than simply riding fibre’s growth story.

Anton Moldan, senior managing director at Macquarie Asset Management, reflected on how investor attitudes have shifted: “Pre-COVID, people weren’t even talking about consumer fibre… post that event, we saw a tremendous amount of investment.” He noted the importance of managing cost-to-pass trade-offs, with aerial builds being cheaper but slower and underground being faster but more expensive.

He highlighted Macquarie’s investment in Swift Fiber, which has secured over $500 million in grants — a sign of how critical government subsidies have become in reaching underserved areas. “You want to make sure you have regional density… the build is only one component.

“If you don’t get that operational efficiencies, you’re not going to get a good overall return,” he added.

Kanan Joshi, partner, co-head of North America, and head of digital Infrastructure – CVC DIF, reinforced the disciplined approach taken by Moldan and his team, adding: “Some of these subscribers actually yield 13, 14% cash yield.

She noted that for CVC, multiples serve more as a discounted cash flow (DCF) reference point than a primary driver. She also emphasised the advantages of local ownership, adding: “We are primarily investors in companies that are family or founder-owned.”

“Local politicians or communities want fibre,” Joshi said, “and so there’s a lot of local support in terms of permits and zoning.”

“There will continue to be strong demand for strong fibre companies and assets. And I think also with the strong cash yields, maybe this goes into a different kind of buyer universe.”

Fibre network markets around the globe are undergoing substantial changes, with economic, competitive, and operational pressures reshaping the industry landscape.

Alix Partners Danis put it plainly: “This business was designed for being an infrastructure play. Infrastructure play by design leads to consolidation.”

He stressed, however, that not all assets are currently structured for easy integration, referring to “ladybug” footprints with scattered city coverage: “I have 15 cities in multiple states,” he said, warning that disconnected assets make operational consolidation more complex and less efficient.

Moldan pointed to towers and data centres as precedents, where the top few players now dominate ownership: “The fibre space continues to be probably the most fragmented… we do expect to see consolidation both on the enterprise and consumer side.”

Crank recalled his experience during wireless and cable roll-ups. “We’re already doing it within our portfolio,” he said, referencing four bolt-on acquisitions by Great Plains.

“You’re going to see smaller players start consolidating each other… and then aggregate it up till you get to these super regional players.”

However, integration challenges persist, with Crank cautioning, “You can only do so many of them at once. You’ve got to pace these things ou,t and so there’s a limit to how fast this can occur.”

Kanan Joshi agreed, offering a more nuanced view of post-acquisition strategy: “We still maintain two brands because the two brands are very strong locally even though it’s one company.”

She explained that while backend functions can often be consolidated easily, local identity still matters in many markets — especially in community-focused rural and midwestern regions.

She added that consolidation timing also depends on how much greenfield opportunity remains. “If you have still a lot of greenfield development that you can do, then as an investor, I want to keep doing that because that’s the best use.”

Once those opportunities narrow, inorganic growth becomes more attractive — particularly when bolstered by state and federal subsidies.

Regulatory and financial environments also play a key role. Danis noted that unlocking the asset-backed securities (ABS) market will be essential to enabling large-scale M&A, particularly for fragmented portfolios.

“We will need to see some changes, both in the regulatory, financing, lender side, and how all of this ecosystem will jointly enable some of this movement closer together,” he said.

Danis added that any roll-up would need to be more than a patchwork — it should be an assimilation. “It doesn’t mean I don’t need to operate two or three brands. I can. It may be very efficient… But we need platforms that are proficient, can scale and execute.”

While mega-mergers are just on the horizon, the panelists admitted to seeing significant opportunity in Tier 2 and 3 markets, where there’s less competition, legacy infrastructure, and strong local backing helping as key differentiators.

Kanan Joshi explained: “You’re either competing against legacy cable or copper or fixed wireless… there’s a lot of local support and pent-up demand.”

She referenced Verizon’s Frontier deal as a turning point in understanding how overlapping service areas can eliminate potential buyers: “It suddenly became pretty obvious that… if it’s already an existing AT&T or Verizon market, there cannot be a buyer.

“You want to care for putting assets together where part of the assets part of the company is in a Verizon footprint and part of it is in a AT&T footprint [as] then you’re ruling them both out as a potentially buyer. That’s something that one needs to care for, which wasn’t the case until the Frontier deal happened.”

On the topic of market incumbents, Danis added that the likes of Comcast and Charter may be delivering unexpectedly high-quality bundled experiences — especially when it comes to Wi-Fi — that new fibre entrants sometimes underestimate.

“Sometimes we are underestimating what really matters in the eyes of the customer,” he added.

As the fibre market enters a more mature phase — one defined less by frenzied greenfield buildouts and more by operational discipline, capital efficiency, and strategic alignment.

While the logic for consolidation was largely accepted, the path ahead proposed by the panel of experts was that the market will be influenced by a combination of valuation pressures, integration challenges, and market-specific realities.

Moldan identified valuation expectations as a primary friction point in the short term but remained optimistic that industrial logic will ultimately prevail.

“There’s a lot of industrial logic and a lot of need for this,” he noted, suggesting that the broader consolidation narrative remains intact, even if its timeline is longer than some anticipate.

CIBC’s Gorman pointed to consistent activity levels and strategic interest as reinforcing indicators. “Every deal we see happen… seems like they’re all pointing in the right direction,” he said, noting that momentum is building steadily, if not dramatically.

Taken together, the message is clear: the fibre sector is shifting from high-growth expectations to long-term, infrastructure-minded value creation. This next phase won’t be marked by explosive change but by incremental gains, scaled execution, and carefully timed consolidation.