- According to a new report, the cost to deploy fiber broadband networks rose a bit from 2023 to 2024
- The median cost to deploy underground fiber is more than twice as much as aerial fiber
- Labor is the primary component for deployment costs, accounting for 60% to 80% of the total cost
The median cost of labor and materials to deploy underground fiber is $18.25 per foot compared to $6.55 per foot for aerial fiber, according to a new report from the Fiber Broadband Association (FBA) and the consulting firm Cartesian.
The data for the Fiber Deployment Cost report was gathered during October and November 2024 via surveys and interviews. Participants included network operators and contractors that deploy fiber, with projects distributed across 32 states.
The data indicates that underground deployments have a wide cost range compared to aerial deployments. The range of underground costs are broadly distributed, with a few deployments costing up to $50 per foot. Conversely, aerial deployments are largely clustered around the median with a small tail of more expensive deployments. The wider distribution of underground deployment costs can be explained by variation in construction technique and terrain.
Meg Corriveau, manager of Strategy and Analytics at Cartesian, said during an FBA webinar, “This is not to say that aerial is always cheaper in every scenario or even in the long run if you’re looking at maintenance costs and things like that. But when it comes to what we’re looking at here, which is really focused on deployment itself, we do find that underground deployments are costlier.”
Interestingly, deployment costs in 2024 were higher than in 2023. Median underground costs were 12% higher ($18.25 vs. $16.25), while median aerial costs were 1% higher ($6.55 vs. $6.49).
Labor costs
Labor is the primary component for deployment costs, accounting for 60% to 80% of the total cost. The median labor cost for underground deployment was $13.23 per foot versus $4 per foot for aerial. Typically, underground deployments take more time and require more effort to dig and bury cables, while aerial deployments can be relatively labor light once make-ready work is complete.
Roughly 75% of respondents said they use outsourced labor rather than internal teams, even though outsourced labor was substantially more expensive for underground deployments.
The median labor cost for underground deployments is $9 per foot with in-house labor compared to $19.95 per foot for outsourced labor. In contrast, for aerial deployments, there were no reported cost savings at the median: both internal and outsourced labor had similar median deployment costs of $7 per foot.
Costs vary by region
The research also segmented responses by region and found a more pronounced cost difference between regions for underground deployments as compared to aerial builds. This is in line with expectations, given that underground build costs are more sensitive to terrain.
For underground deployments, the highest median costs were observed for Western states, while Northeastern states had the widest range of costs. In both cases, this appears consistent with the prevalence of mountain areas and rocky ground.
