October 18, 2024
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Broadband Providers Invested $94.7B In U.S. Communications Infrastructure
Second Highest Annual Investment in 22 Years
America’s broadband industry invested $94.7 billion in U.S. communications infrastructure in 2023, as broadband providers worked intensively to connect communities to high-speed networks. The annual figure represents the second highest industry capex in 22 years, more than 23% above the historic annual average.
The 2023 expenditures build on decades of investment in world-class networks and connectivity infrastructure, which now total nearly $2.2 trillion since 1996. Investment this past year reflects a range of activities, including expansion of fiber deployments, integration of fiber and mobile networks, increased rural broadband construction, and network capacity additions to keep pace with advances in artificial intelligence and other applications that are fueling rising bandwidth demands among consumers and across the economy.
Annual capex involves complex decisions regarding long-term planning to meet customers’ needs, as well as macroeconomic and other factors. An intensely competitive marketplace and strong consumer demand spurred 2023’s near-record investment.
Recent investment is made even more noteworthy because it occurs at the same time broadband prices continue to lag overall inflation, making high-speed broadband among the most cost-effective consumer services.
*This USTelecom report collects capital expenditures data for major wireline, wireless and cable broadband providers to approximate an industry aggregate. This figure does not include smaller wireline broadband providers, electric cooperatives, or satellite broadband providers due to the difficulty of obtaining consistent and comparable data. We estimate these competitors’ capex contributions at no less than $2 billion. Thus, the $94.7 billion annual capex figure in this report is a conservative estimate.