The returns are very long dated. We are talking a decade and depend on the exit strategy.
1. Mesa, Arizona has at least four (4) fiber overbuilders, some are open and some are not, the returns are going to be poor with more than one overbuilder.
2. A Telco copper to fiber overbuilder (Frontier and Brightspeed an Apollo PE company) who do not offer up their fiber to third parties Brightspeed plan is 3mm homes over 3.5 years. It's going to spend $3billion on this iniative
3. A single open fiber overbuild (competing against the telco old copper and the cable companies hybrid network) the margins are high but the investment return timeline is extreme (10-13 years). The 10-13 years is coming from Brookfield's projections.
As an example Brookfield (Intrepid) is building 78,000ft of aerial and 29,000 ft of buried in Pueblo, Colorado. (about 20 miles) passing 41,000 homes for a total cost of $4.6mm (with $2.7mm received in federal grants) . T Mobile is the initial company but small ISPs might become customers later.