“So, we are focused on the key strategic initiatives that enhance our long-term competitiveness and growth capabilities, and we expect to return to a more normalized Internet growth over time.”

In context

“erbuild vintage coming online. It's painful, but it's tied to the pace of overbuild. We don't see overbuilders reaching their penetration and ROI goals now -- within our footprint now or in the future. They don't have the same ubiquitous convergence capabilities as we do, their lower-cost passings have likely been built, some of the planned overbuild was duplicative between operators, meaning less opportunity, and incremental financing cost have increased, putting even more pressure on overbuilder returns. We also expect BEAD passings will provide better capital allocation and ROI for many of these operators. Our assumption is that our competitors are rational economic players with shareholders and balance sheets, which require adequate return on investment. That isn't within our control. So, we are focused on the key strategic initiatives that enhance our long-term competitiveness and growth capabilities, and we expect to return to a more normalized Internet growth over time. Just over a year from when we detailed those initiatives, I wanted to remind everyone of the rationale and update you on their status, as laid out in Slide 4. Our footprint expansion is beating our pacing, penetration, ARPU and ROI targets. New construction will help drive Internet customer growth despite the temporary challenges I mentioned within our existing footprint. 2023 subsidized rural customer growth was already over 100,000. Our penetration also continues to grow at a better-than-expected pace and we'll cover more -- we'll activate more subsidized rural passings this year, both of which Jessica will cover. BEAD will provide additional opportunities, although the potential is uncertain given our concerns regarding how states will apply NTIA guidelines. We'll focus BEAD investment”