One neighborhood, two ways to fill it.

How the model works

Stated so you can argue with it. Each rep closes 0.5 sales a rep-day at $350 per subscriber, rising 0.5 for every $50 above that, six days a week. Weekly yield scales by the square root of the unsold share, so the first pass of an empty territory runs near full speed and the tail slows as it fills. Other channels add a fixed number of penetration points a year until they reach the same ceiling. Revenue counts every active subscriber at their monthly rate; acquisition spend is each channel's cost per subscriber times the subscribers it produced, and organic and later sign-ups cost nothing. Four years, week by week, with no churn, no price changes, and no chargebacks.

The calibration check: a crew of eight on the 1,317-address market reaches 21.00% on day 14 against the 19.74% that deployment actually hit, and 218.5 paid installs against 228 [Knoqly deployment data]. The model runs about 6% hot on penetration and about 4% light on installs at the anchor.

Homes passed, serviceable, unique, and connected

Four denominators appear in published take rates, and the numerator can be gross or net.

• Homes passed counts every address the plant reaches, connectable or not. Neither Cable One nor WideOpenWest files that count; both 10-Ks define the figure they report as serviceable addresses, quoted under serviceable passings below.
• Serviceable passings counts only the addresses that can order service today. Cable One reports passings, "which we previously referred to as homes passed," as "the number of serviceable and marketable homes and businesses passed by our active plant" (Cable One 10-K, 2024); WideOpenWest reports homes passed as "the number of serviceable addresses, such as single residence homes, apartments and condominium units, and businesses passed by our broadband network" (WOW 10-K, 2024). Pulse Fiber in Loveland, Colorado ages the count and includes only "fiber-enabled premises available in the Pulse network 90 days or more" (Pulse Fiber, 2020).
• Unique passings is the RVA LLC count of each home once, however many fiber providers pass it: 84.6 million unique homes marketed against total passings at the 100 million mark, with 16% of homes holding more than one fiber passing (Fiber Broadband Association, April 2026). The FBA headline average uses this denominator.
• Homes connected counts addresses with a drop installed, active account or not, so it runs above active-subscriber take rate. RVA reports connections as a count separate from passings and puts the time for most homes passed to become connections at about five years (Fiber Broadband Association, April 2026).
• Net vs gross take rate turns on the numerator. Gross counts every order written; net counts active subscribers after cancellations, disconnects, and chargebacks. The formula at the top of this page is net.

What a good take rate looks like

The US average fiber take rate is 46.5% on unique passings and 40% once homes with two or more fiber providers are counted, per RVA LLC data the Fiber Broadband Association published in April 2026. That average blends networks that opened last quarter with networks that have sold for a decade; in the same release RVA's Mike Render puts the time for most homes passed to become connections at about five years. For the number that matches your build's age, use the take rate benchmarks by year since launch, which lines up Frontier's 12 and 24 month targets and the NRECA and NRTC co-op survey by build age.

How to raise fiber take rate

Six levers an ISP controls, in launch order.

• Pre-register before the plant is lit, and build where the registrations are. American Fork, Utah runs a no-cost municipal registration and states that "neighborhoods that have the largest pre-registrations will be the first to get services": 76 planned areas, 17,111 registered as of 2026-09-07 (American Fork; registration map). From pre-registration to activation covers converting the list.
• Put an offer behind the order. Glo Fiber gives pre-registrants free wall-to-wall WiFi for 12 months, which it values at $120 (Glo Fiber, as of 2026-09-07). Ezee Fiber charges $10 to pre-register and returns the first month free, up to $109 by plan, plus priority installation (Ezee Fiber, as of 2026-09-07).
• Knock every serviceable address. A trained rep at the door with the offer and an install date [field experience]. One 1,317-address market went from 2.43% to 19.74% in 14 days, 228 new subscribers, in one door-to-door wave [Knoqly deployment data]; door-to-door sales for ISPs covers the crew.
• Book the install on the porch and keep the gap short. Orders that sit between signature and install are where sold subscribers disappear; track cancellations between order and activation as their own metric [field experience].
• Sign access agreements before knocking multi-dwelling units. FCC 22-12, adopted February 11, 2022, prohibits exclusive and graduated revenue sharing agreements with building owners and requires a disclaimer on marketing materials where an exclusive marketing arrangement exists (FCC 22-12). Unit access still runs through the property manager, and knocking without an agreement produces trespass complaints and no activations [field experience].
• Pair the fiber offer with mobile. AT&T's plan for the fiber markets it bought from Lumen, at about 25% penetration against about 40% in its legacy footprint, is more marketing spend plus convergence: 42% of legacy AT&T fiber subscribers take its mobile service against under 20% of Lumen's, and its CFO said in March 2026 that "a big part of our efforts will be focused on increasing penetration" (Light Reading, March 2026).