Tag Archives: Uniti

Leftover Copper Customers

I read that T-Mobile was thinking about buying the fiber assets of UNITI, which includes the fiber assets of Windstream. Regardless of whether that sale happens or not, it made me wonder about what happens to the customers served by copper who don’t go with a sale. Copper customers would be those served with telephone copper who are buying traditional TDM telephone service, DSL, and T1s and related products.

The concept of buying only fiber customers from an ISP seems to be a new industry theme. Lumen sold its fiber customers to AT&T but retained the copper customers. We know Lumen’s stated plans when it sold fiber customers to AT&T. The company publicly said it would retain and care for its copper-based consumer services since they continue to provide a strong ongoing financial contribution to the company.

But will they really? I have to think that a lot of Lumen markets were a mixture of copper and fiber, and that a lot of the technicians and much of the support apparatus for caring for these customers will leave with the fiber customers. I could be wrong, but I find it hard to imagine that Lumen will provide a robust maintenance crew to take care of the copper customers. This seems even less likely for a smaller company like Windstream. Will the remaining company really want to keep the entire company structure needed to take care of copper customers? That’s not only technicians in trucks, but it means somebody to man the central offices, somebody to field customer service calls, somebody to take technical service calls and dispatch repairmen.

I have a hard time picturing a telco willing to retain all of these functions to care for a fraction of their previous customers and for a shrinking customer base. This would also mean having to keep technicians who understand copper. I already know that all big telcos have lost most of their experienced copper technicians to retirement. I have a hard time envisioning technicians willing to go to work for a telco that only owns copper – there would be no upward mobility to learn newer technologies, and the job is guaranteed to end when the copper is eventually decommissioned. Does anybody really want to be a Lumen copper technician?

It seems buyers of fiber customers don’t want the hassle of buying the copper networks and then having to go through the process of disposing of the copper and disconnecting customers. It’s fully understandable that a company like T-Mobile wouldn’t want to take on that burden with UNITI. The FCC recently changed the rules to make it easier to dispose of copper customers, and as part of that order, the FCC overrode any state regulations related to disposing of copper customers. But the FCC did not eliminate all regulatory rules related to owning a regulated telephone company, and I’m sure that one of the  motivations for a company like T-Mobile not to take copper customers is to avoid getting dragged into that regulatory world.

Windstream and Lumen got some recent help from the FCC when it said that companies with copper networks can ‘grandfather’ their TDM products, meaning they don’t have to sell services to any new customers. While the FCC order didn’t use the term, this means the end of the carrier of last resort responsibilities for telcos.

I would not be surprised to see Lumen or other companies stuck with a copper-only network take the path of milking any remaining revenues from those customers, but doing nothing to retain or maintain the customers. For example, if a copper customer has a technical issue, they might be dropped instead of trying to fix the problem. This kind of approach would keep revenues for a while while eliminating most of the cost of keeping and operating a copper network.

Broadband Shorts September 2025

The following topics are interesting, just too short of a topic for a full blog.

Criminal Damage to Undersea Fibers. Finland filed criminal charges against the top officers of an oil tanker in connection with damage done to undersea cables in December. The National Prosecution Authority in Helsinki indicted the captain and two first officers of the Eagle S, a Cook Islands-registered tanker that is suspected of being part of a shadow fleet of ships that transports Russian oil in violation of international sanctions. The officers are charged with aggravated criminal mischief for allegedly dragging the ship’s anchor for more than 56 miles across the Gulf of Finland on Christmas Day, cutting five electric and telecom cables and causing almost $70 million in damage. Press releases at the time assumed the damage was accidental.

AT&T Class Action Lawsuits. Millions of AT&T customers are eligible to file claims in the $177 million legal settlement related to two data breaches. The first data breach happened in March 2024 and involved customer data, including date of birth and social security numbers. The second breach in July 2024 exposed calling and text records for nearly all AT&T cellular customers. Multiple lawsuits were filed against AT&T and were consolidated into a single settlement, with $149 million for the first breach and $28 million for the second.

Starlink Introduces Introductory Rates. Starlink has joined the ISP competitive fray and now offers introductory rates to attract new subscribers in rural areas where the company has excess capacity. In affected areas, the introductory rate for monthly broadband is cut from $120 to as low as $85. The company also introduced a new Lite plan for as low as $59 per month for customers with low broadband needs. The plan doesn’t guarantee broadband, and speeds might be deprioritized in times of heavy usage in the area. Starlink has also slashed the price of its receiver in some areas to as low as $89. The discounted rates are only guaranteed for a year, and if customers switch plans or have a service interruption, their rate reverts to the full rates.

Windstream Reunites with Uniti. A decade after the company split into two parts, Windstream and Uniti are reuniting into one company. The original split was unique in the industry and established Uniti as a Reit (Real Estate Investment Trust) that took ownership of the network and leased it back to the telco. The companies are being recombined since the company believes the value of the recombined business will be greater than the value of the two separate companies. The new company will retain the Uniti name and the UNIT stock symbol. The company will keep the Kinetic brand for Windstream fiber customers.

Wi-Fi 7 Adoption at 2%. Ookla reports that one year after introduction, WiFi 7 adoption is just under 2% in the U.S. Nobody expected instant adoption because ISPs need to update customer routers, and customers need to upgrade home devices to be able to use the 6 GHz spectrum being used for WiFi 7. Ookla reports that average speeds with WiFi 7 are almost 400 Mbps faster than the average speeds on Wi-Fi 6E devices and more than 600 Mbps faster than basic Wi-Fi 6. The big advantage of WiFi 7 is the multiple channels available with 6 GHz and the larger size of the channels, which together eliminate contention at a customer site of multiple devices trying to use a small number of channels.

FCC to Bar Chinese Testing Labs. The FCC has begun the process to withdraw the ability of three Chinese labs to certify devices for us in the U.S. The FCC has already withdrawn the testing capability of four other Chinese labs. Many people are not aware that the FCC approves broadband and wireless devices to make sure they meet the claimed specifications. This is particularly important for wireless devices since poorly designed devices can bleed into nearby spectrum bands. In recent years, as many as 75% of devices have been tested and certified in China.

AT&T Accelerating Copper Retirements. The FCC placed a two-year moratorium on notifications related to copper retirement in March and proposed changes to make this permanent. AT&T reacted quickly to the change in regulation and has begun the process of retiring copper in around 500 wire centers, or 10% of the AT&T telco exchanges.

The Windstream / Uniti Mess

I’ve been fielding a lot of questions asking about the controversy between Windstream and Uniti. Most people seem to be fuzzy about the relationship between the companies. I’ll try my best to explain the mess that these two companies have created.

Windstream decided in January 2014 to spin off its assets into a REIT, which is a real estate investment trust, a formal kind of investment vehicle defined by law. A REIT generally owns real estate like apartment buildings, shopping malls, or perhaps specialty real estate like storage buildings or college dorms. REITs sell ownership shares to the public, similar to stocks. An investor in a REIT is making a real-estate investment while gaining safety by spreading risk across multiple properties. A REIT is generally expected to pay significant dividends.

Windstream was a traditional mostly family-owned regulated telco. Windstream moved its fiber and copper assets to a REIT owned by the newly-formed Uniti. In the split of assets, Robert Gunderman remained as CFO of Windstream while his brother Kenneth become CEO of Uniti. The Uniti REIT is attractive to investors because Windstream pays roughly $650 million per year in ‘rent’ to Uniti for use of the network. Since formation, Uniti has added other assets to the portfolio, but the Windstream assets still represent 70% of its assets.

The current mess was triggered when Aurelius Capital, a lender to Windstream, filed a lawsuit claiming that the REIT arrangement was a violation of Windstream’s corporate bonds. Windstream immediately filed for bankruptcy earlier this year when a judge ruled in favor of Aurelius Capital.

Windstream and Uniti immediately went to mediation to try to resolve the issues raised by the Aurelius Capital lawsuit. Recently it became clear that the two companies could not resolve the issues, and Windstream and Uniti are now going to court to decide the future of the REIT arrangement.

The court case is mostly going to have to resolve an accounting issue. At issue is the question of whether the payments from Windstream to Uniti are rent or if they are instead a disguised financing arrangement. This difference is vital to the survival of Windstream and Uniti. If the payments are rent, as Uniti maintains, then Windstream would have to pay rent before they make debt payments to Aurelius Capital and others. Further if the payments are rent then Wondstream would have to continue to pay Uniti to use the network. However, if the payments to Uniti are considered to be a financing arrangement, then those payments become unsecured debt and go to the end of the line in payment priority.

The ‘rent’ payments to Unity equate to a $6.9 billion long-term liability of Windstream. The company has another $4.8 billion in senior debt and $1.5 billion of unsecured debt. If a court decides that the payments to Uniti are rent, then the bankruptcy court is likely to erase some of the debt owed to Aurelius Capital and others. However, if the payment due to Uniti are unsecured debt, then a bankruptcy court is likely to erase some of the Uniti debt, which would put Uniti out of business.

Windstream would see a huge windfall if they could walk away from some or all of the Uniti payments – however, they’d be in the awkward position of not owning their networks. It’s hard to picture what happens to the networks if Uniti goes bankrupt.

There are several factors that the courts will use to determine if the Uniti payments are more like debt or rent. For example, rent is generally determined by fair market value of the property. The copper networks are nearing end-of-life and it’s hard to argue that the annual payments to rent copper shouldn’t be declining. However, the payments from Windstream to Uniti increase every year during the 35-year lease term. When examining all of the arguments made in this case, from an accounting perspective it seems that Windstream has the stronger arguments – but the courts will have to decide.

If Windstream is required to continue the full payments to Uniti, the telco will be cash-strapped for the foreseeable future. It seems that Windsteam feels confident they will win the lawsuit because they recently announced a plan to bring gigabit fiber to 60% of its customer base over the next 10 years, predicated upon getting out from under the Uniti debt payments. This means that the broadband future for a lot of communities rides upon the court deciding that the Uniti payments are debt and not rent.