Hardware & Networking: Carrier Capex Tracker: Telco and Cable/Broadband CapEx Outlooks Unchanged; 2Q26 Spending In-Line with Expectations

Research evidence excerpt

Hardware & Networking: Carrier Capex Tracker: Telco and Cable/Broadband CapEx Outlooks Unchanged; 2Q26 Spending In-Line with Expectations

J P M O R G A N North America Equity Research

04 August 2026

Hardware & Networking

Carrier Capex Tracker: Telco and Cable/Broadband

CapEx Outlooks Unchanged; 2Q26 Spending In-Line

with Expectations

Key takeaways from Telco and Cable/Broadband 2Q26 earnings: In Telco, T IT Hardware/ Telecom & Networking

is becoming more aggressive in pursuing fiber market share, with Fiber ARPU flat Equipment

y/y (excluding Lumen) as the company sacrifices broadband revenue to maximize Joseph Cardoso AC

combined fiber and wireless revenue instead (i.e. convergence). Together, T and (1-212) 622-9036

VZ reiterated their intentions to rapidly scale their fiber footprints, while TMUS joseph.cardoso@jpmchase.com

continued to refrain from establishing a fiber passings target in pursuit of Marc Vitenzon

convergence or scale alone, and instead emphasized its focus on ROI. Notably, VZ (1-212) 622-3342

announced a $1 bn+ Google dark-fiber contract in 2Q, with additional deals marc.vitenzon@jpmchase.com

expected to represent multiple billions of dollars in revenue over the next several Manmohanpreet Singh

(1-212) 622-4527

years, providing another proof point for the demand for long-haul/metro fiber and manmohanpreet.singh@jpmchase.com

data center interconnect. In Cable/Broadband, CMCSA shared that promotional

Akanksh Chauhan

intensity is increasing in some markets, some of which it characterized as (1-212) 622-0045

“irrational.” The company observed broadband downstream traffic up +10% y/y akanksh.chauhan@jpmorgan.com

and upstream traffic up +25% y/y, attributing some of the traffic growth to AI J.P. Morgan Securities LLC

queries.