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Fibre-to-the-home (FTTH/FTTP) access networks: the fibre run down every street to the door. The economics turn on a penetration flywheel: a builder spends a large, fixed cost to pass homes, then earns only on the homes that connect. At low take-up the fixed cost swamps the revenue; as penetration climbs, the margin re-rates. Pick a real operator below and trace the build, the business model and a working set of returns.
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Drag the sliders to see what earns the money: the homes the fibre passes, the ARPU on each connection, and how fully the network has been taken up.
A fibre network is built on a single, unusual fact: the operator spends a large, fixed cost to pass a home, running fibre down the street past the door, but earns nothing until that home actually connects (take-up, or penetration). Most of the network opex is incurred per home passed, not per home connected, so passing the homes is the fixed cost and value is take-up × ARPU. At low penetration the fixed cost of the build and its upkeep swamps the thin connected revenue, and the network loses money (the altnet risk). As penetration climbs, the same passed-homes base spreads over far more paying connections and the margin re-rates sharply. What matters, therefore, is how fully the network is taken up rather than how much fibre was laid. It scales into a long, indexed annuity: once a footprint is well-penetrated, every connection is recurring revenue on capital already sunk.
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See also the Fibre build & penetration simulator (model a footprint passing homes and ramping take-up) and the Cash-flow & DCF model.