T-Mobile and EQT have successfully finalized their joint venture to acquire the US fiber provider Lumos. This strategic move marks an effort by the mobile operator to expand its fixed broadband offerings. Initially announced last April, this acquisition will see existing Lumos customers transition to T-Mobile Fiber, with T-Mobile assuming responsibility for customer experience, service delivery, and marketing.
Following the acquisition, the business model will evolve towards wholesale, with T-Mobile overseeing customer relationships, thereby leveraging its brand to attract new subscribers. The joint venture aims to identify potential markets and handle the engineering and design of networks, network deployment, and customer installation.
As part of this comprehensive effort, T-Mobile plans to invest $950 million into the joint venture. This investment is intended to fuel the expansion of Lumos’s fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network, which currently spans 7,500 miles and serves roughly 475,000 homes in the Mid-Atlantic region.
Further into the future, another $500 million investment is slated to be injected by 2028. The aim for this capital is to extend the fiber rollout to encompass 3.5 million homes by the end of that year. While Lumos customers will retain their current fiber service, they are set to benefit from T-Mobile’s robust support infrastructure, which includes retail presence and bundled offerings.
Mike Katz, T-Mobile’s President of Marketing, Strategy and Products, underscored the importance of this acquisition by stating, “T-Mobile is already the fastest-growing broadband provider in America, and expanding into fiber helps us take the next big step in delivering what customers truly want – faster, more reliable internet that simply works.”