With so much uncertainty in the world right now, it wouldn’t be surprising to see companies pull back on risk-taking until things get more stable both economically and politically in the U.S. and around the globe.
Impact: But that hasn’t been the case in U.S. telecom so far in 2025 (and wasn’t really in 2024 either), with data from PwC showing that the industry has shown a strong appetite for both large deals like Charter/Cox and AT&T/Lumen as well as smaller deals like the Brooking Infrastructure deal for Hotwire, Midco’s acquisition of Savage Communications, Ripple Fiber’s targeting of smaller local providers, and TDS selling off some non-fiber assets. Daniel Hays, a PwC principal, told Fierce Network that dealmaking within the industry “has held up remarkably well” thus far and while there are a variety of reasons for that, it’s not just because of what many observers view as the ushering in of a deregulatory environment by the Trump Administration. The real reason appears to center around the fact that broadband and mobile have become essential services for most people. That’s generated more confidence among investors chasing deals within the segment because there’s less risk of failure when people are always going to want faster broadband speeds or the next mobile device or even bigger unlimited plan.
Not surprisingly, the $34.5 billion Charter-Cox deal tops the charts for U.S. telecom transactions so far this year price-wise, with PwC finding that most other deals in the segment have come in under the $10 billion mark. The consulting group’s analysis indicates that lower deal valuation likely reflects uncertainty around economics as well as the current policy and regulatory environment. S&P Global recently suggested that the level of uncertainty in the market, though it hasn’t caused companies to pull inward and work with what they’ve got, means that additional deals made throughout the second half of the year could end up being smaller deals in the neighborhood of AT&T’s acquisition of Lumen’s Mass Market fiber assets for $5.75 billion rather than something closer to the $34.5 billion Charter-Cox price or even a $20 billion deal like Verizon-
Frontier agreed to in 2024.
But it’s also possible that private equity views the updated BEAD guidelines (because everything seems to tie back to BEAD these days) as a sign that investors should take a step back and reevaluate fiber investments in rural markets. Without the preference for “future-proof” fiber baked into the BEAD rules, there’s a good chance fiber won’t be deployed to nearly as many BEAD-eligible passings, making some smaller fiber players previously poised to reap BEAD funding less of a sure thing for investors. The changes to the BEAD guidelines around unlicensed fixed wireless also mean there will be fewer BEAD-
eligible locations altogether. Broadband Breakfast reported that researchers at Virginia Tech estimated that including locations covered by unlicensed fixed wireless on state broadband maps could reduce eligible BEAD locations by up to 1.1 million. Another analysis from the founder of BroadbandToolkit.com indicated that 11 states could see their BEAD-eligible locations drop by 25%. That number includes Nevada, which could lose as much as 78% of its BEAD eligible locations and had its final approval rescinded as part of the BEAD revisions.
All 56 BEAD-eligible entities have 30 days from the June 6 “Notice of Funding Opportunity” to update their eligibility maps to reflect the presence of unlicensed fixed wireless coverage, so there should be more information available on the impact of that change soon. It’s possible the BEAD changes will inform how private investors view rural fiber opportunities moving forward. With smaller providers like Allo, which expected to benefit from the program’s fiber preference, starting to struggle to raise capital in the face of ongoing BEAD delays, they could become attractive targets for private investment, particularly among more established players in the fiber segment.
