In the world of fiber broadband construction, laying duct, strand, and fiber cable is just the beginning. To actually deliver service—and generate revenue—every piece of that infrastructure must connect from end to end. But as network builders know all too well, it’s rarely that simple.
Fiber routes often span miles, crossing county lines, city streets, state highways, and utility-owned pole networks. Each of those jurisdictions comes with its own permitting processes, timelines, and bureaucratic unpredictability. While your engineering plans may be ready to go, your schedule is ultimately at the mercy of the agencies that control the rights-of-way.
Why Stranded Assets Happen
To stay ahead of delays and keep crews busy, operators often begin construction where permits are approved—even if other sections of the route are still in limbo. It’s a pragmatic response to a broken system: directional drilling in one area, installing aerial strand in another, and getting “shovel-ready” for when the rest of the permits come through.
From a financial standpoint, once duct or strand is placed, it’s capitalized and becomes an asset on the books. It’s reported as “Footage Built” or “Cable Placed” and is seen as a positive trending metric. However, if the infrastructure doesn’t actually connect from the network core to customer premise, it can’t carry service. No customers, no revenue. Just costs—often substantial ones—sitting idle in the field.
These are stranded assets: physical infrastructure that has been installed and paid for, but does nothing to support the business until the rest of the route is built. In long-haul or regional builds, this can stretch across hundreds of miles. In a fiber to the home deployment, thousands of homes can be impacted. A delay on a single bridge crossing can strand millions of dollars of work for years.
Why It Matters
Stranded assets inflate your work-in-progress (WIP) balance and delay your return on investment. They tie up capital, create misleading progress metrics, and make it harder to forecast when a network area will be revenue-generating. If left unchecked, WIP spirals into a financial sinkhole—and the longer it grows, the harder it is to untangle.
This isn’t just a construction issue—it’s a business operations issue. One that can and should be measured.
Our Solution: Turning Stranded Assets into Revenue-Ready Links
At Broadband Insights, we help operators bring clarity to the chaos.
Our analytics platform tracks construction data, permit timelines, asset placement, and network connectivity across your entire build. By tying asset data to its operational status, we shine a light on stranded assets and WIP accumulation in real time.
More importantly, we help answer questions like:
Where do I have stranded infrastructure, and how much is it costing me?
What parts of the network are just one permit or one splice away from being revenue-ready?
Which segments should I prioritize to “light up” the largest number of homes passed with the least amount of additional work?
By turning stranded asset data into actionable insights, we help you reduce WIP, accelerate time-to-revenue, and better manage capital spend.
Don’t Just Build. Build Smart.
In fiber, building for the sake of progress isn’t always progress. You need visibility into where your dollars are going—and when they’ll start working for you.
Let’s stop leaving assets stranded in the field. With the right data, we can get them moving again.