Julia Laulis: Net adds, no. But I can tell you that the 100 meg offer was an initiative aimed at value-conscious customers. While we don’t lose our existing customers by and large to fixed wireless broadband, they are targeting their customers and bundling them at a low price. So we went to market with this. Our connects were robust and the majority, far and away, 2/3 of the customers connected at higher speed, higher priced tiers than that 100 megs for $25. So it was basically a call to action, the phones rang and then people elected into higher tiers.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Greg Williams with TD Cowen.
Gregory Williams: Julie, you noted that wireline competition is increasing. I was hoping you’d put a finer point on it. In the past, you noted 25% of your footprint had a wireline 1 gig offer. If I could flip that to fixed wireless as well, I think you said 35%, which includes fixed wireless as a footprint — was in your footprint. What are those numbers today, as an update to that? And where do you think that could ultimately end up? I think about Verizon launching their BC category, C-band into rural areas, and it could be in your markets. And then second question is just on the presentation success you’re having by going downstream and the $25 offer and how you can sort of justify that tactically. I think as you said on your scripted remarks that you can now offer premium service to the premium customer, so could you hike up sort of prices on the high end to help justify the business case in the low end?
Just helping us understand the ARPU impact overall of these offers.
Julia Laulis: So related to wireline competition, the majority of our markets do not have a wired competitor that can offer 100 megs or more. The majority. Fixed wireless, T-Mo — our overlap with T-Mo right now is 36% of the marketplace. Verizon is, I think 16%. I’d have to look it up real quick. Yes, 12%. 12% right now for them. Our success in what you call downstream and I would call value-conscious customers, I think the 100 meg offer is an example of that. And I think that we’re going to be trying other things as well. But we will only do so to the extent that what we’re offering is a profitable package. We’re focused on delivering profitability over the long term, not doing something reactive in the short term that would hurt us for the long term.
We do — the marketplace is showing really interesting dichotomies, I think, in that we see definite price elasticity on the higher-end products through research and actually selling them. I mean they just keep buying more and more, and we had a rate adjustment this year and they’re still buying more and there’s no churn. But then again, you have this really large response to the 100 meg $25 offer. And it’s almost like there’s a polarization on both sides. So again, I think we have to be surgical, I think we have to, call it, personalized broadband. I mean we have to take the market segmentation approach that I talked about in order to really drive new growth.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Frank Louthan with Raymond James.
Frank Louthan: Great. And maybe I missed this in the call, but the $25 offer, when did that start in the quarter? And is that kind of the way you’ll be able to get to positive subs for the year? And then can you give us a little color on the nature of the homes that you’re passing? You’re adding quite a few each quarter. Are these competitive areas? Are they just kind of filling in holes in your footprint? And what’s your expectation for penetration in those homes longer term? Can those areas you’re targeting get better penetration than your base? Or a little lower? How should we think about it?
Julia Laulis: Yes. That’s a good question, Frank. So the $25 offer started at the beginning of October. It was a promotion — September? I’m trying to think. Okay, September. Sorry, I don’t — we’re in November now. I’m all off. I can’t keep my time straight since COVID. I apologize. So beginning of September. It was supposed to end at the end of September, but we had literally — like we were overwhelmed, our phones were ringing off the hook. So — and we didn’t see any detriment to that point. In other words, people weren’t buying the $25 offer, so that wasn’t a concern. And from what we saw, they weren’t churning. So we extended it through the end of October and then it sunsetted. So that promo is gone and we’re back to regular pricing.
I don’t — that isn’t a one-trick pony to ride in order to get growth, I don’t think. It was just an example that we could draw attention by flagging a low price in the marketplace. And in terms of our homes passed, it is — we have — not all of our markets because, boy, that sure would be nice, but a subset of our markets that have new build extensions in them. Those are starting to slow down a teeny bit with the economy and the high interest rates, but — so new builds, as part of that, what I call new build. Market expansion, call it edge out, is another piece of that, where we have — if we can service an area that has a competitor that isn’t taking good care of customers and community, you could read that to mean they’re charging really high prices or their services aren’t reliable, and we can service them off of an existing system site ahead and we will overbuild those areas.
So that is what those homes passed reflect. And just a note on high prices because I mentioned it. Just because our ARPU is high, does not mean that our prices to our customers are high. Those — that ARPU is driven by customer choice far and away. Like gig sell-in of 37%, for example, or add-ons that they are choosing to take. Our base rate is a value. I would suggest that anyone living in a metropolitan area would not be able to get our pricing. What do I expect the penetration to be in those homes passed? I expect it to be — in a market expansion scenario, to be at least 40%. And in our new build areas, I would expect it to near the penetration of that particular system, which varies widely.
