AT&T doubles down on fiber with $5.75 billion Lumen buy

Lumen fiber acquisition will help AT&T double its current fiber footprint by 2030

AT&T is taking a new step in its aggressive fiber-and-5G strategy, announcing plans to acquire Lumen’s Mass Markets Fiber Business for $5.75 billion in an all-cash deal.

The deal aligns with AT&T’s long-term goal to increase its fiber footprint and will bring AT&T Fiber to over 4 million new customer locations outside the company’s existing footprint.

AT&T says it currently has about 30 million total fiber locations, and the Lumen buy will enable it to double its current fiber footprint to about 60 million locations by 2030. The expansion will target metro areas such as Denver, Las Vegas, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Orlando, Phoenix, Portland, Salt Lake City and Seattle.

The acquisition is expected to close in the first half of 2026, pending regulatory approval.

John Stankey, chairman and CEO of AT&T, said that the deal “represents a significant investment in U.S. connectivity infrastructure that will create jobs and spur economic activity in numerous regions and major metro areas across 11 states.” That will bring AT&T’s fiber reach to a total of 32 states.

The plan: Expand fiber and pick up more fiber+wireless customers

AT&T will acquire Lumen’s last-mile mass market fiber assets and “associated network elements in central offices”, plus “substantially all” of Lumen’s non-enterprise fiber customers, which number around 1 million and will be transitioned over time to become AT&T Fiber customers.

The deal doesn’t include Lumen’s enterprise fiber customers or its consumer customers who use copper-based infrastructure—which makes sense, considering that AT&T is trying to shut down its own copper infrastructure.

AT&T said that it expects to be able to boost the customer penetration rates for the Lumen territories to be in-line with what it sees in current AT&T Fiber markets, growing its base of customers who subscribe to both fiber and wireless services and thereby boosting its mobility business as well. On AT&T’s most recent quarterly call, Stankey said that more than 40% of AT&T Fiber households also subscribe to the company’s wireless services. “Accounts with both fiber and wireless services have lifetime values that are more than 15% greater than customers with standalone services,” Stankey added.

The deal follows broader industry trends where fiber deployment is seen as a key driver for economic growth (although not everyone agrees). At AT&T’s investor day last December, executives had emphasized several points of its go-forward strategy: owner’s economics at scale, particularly when it comes to fiber; implementing multi-vendor Open RAN; and exiting legacy infrastructure.Earlier this month, AT&T had announced an open-access infrastructure deal with Prime Fiber to expand fiber access in Arizona.

The Lumen deal also comes as the Federal Communications Commission approved Verizon’s $20 billion acquisition of Frontier—after Verizon agreed to terms that included dropping diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Meanwhile, T-Mobile US also has big plans for broadband. T-Mobile US closed on its Lumos fiber JV last month, with plans to expand Lumos’ network to reach 3.5 million homes by the end of 2028. T-Mo has put up $950 million for that JV so far, with another $500 million planned for investment between 2027-2028.

T-Mobile US said that it already offers fiber in parts of 32 markets across the U.S. through its fiber JVs and partnerships, and it expects to reach 12-15 million households or more with fiber by the end of 2030.

Lumen’s fiber will go to a subsidiary that AT&T will partly divest to control costs

AT&T said that it will hold the Lumen fiber network assets, including “certain fiber network deployment capabilities”, in a fully-owned subsidiary—which AT&T plans to partially divest to an equity partner after the deal closes. That partner will co-invest in the ongoing business.

The carrier said that the approach is reflective of its strategy to “blend direct ownership with external investment to manage operational costs and risk.”