Evelyn ColemanChief Financial Officer · Essays & perspectiveEvelyn Coleman Chief Financial Officer · United States
A selected perspective
Subscriber metrics5 min read
Making fibre investment answer to household demand
Regional broadband operators still open their lender presentations with homes passed and subscriber totals. Fixed-wireless competition has shown how much those figures can hide, and boards should ask for serviceable locations, paying relationships and churn by tenure instead.
Releasing the fibre programme one tranche at a time
In mid-2022 our chief technology officer and chief executive proposed upgrading the 41 towns with our oldest coaxial plant, 410,000 locations, to fibre to the premises within three years at a cost of $520 million.
Public money for rural broadband is real and useful, but the award letter is the smallest part of the bargain. Before accepting one, a board should value the match, the build deadline, the service commitment and the cost overrun that stays with the company.
Cable operators keep unprofitable video bundles because they believe video customers are less likely to cancel broadband. When we measured that belief properly, most of the effect belonged to the customer, not the bundle.
Revenue, 2025
$684M
59 per cent residential broadband, 18 per cent business services
Locations moved to fibre since 2023
236,000
Of 410,000 planned by 2028, released in gated tranches
Net leverage, December 2025
5.5x
Down from a peak of 5.9x in 2023, after a refinancing without a distribution
Regional broadband is paid for street by street but earned household by household, so I make every fibre dollar answer to the customers it wins.
I am the chief financial officer of Ridgeburn Communications, a fictional cable and fibre broadband operator based in Springfield, Missouri. We connect 339,400 broadband customers across 287 towns in Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas and Oklahoma, many of them places with one grocery store and a county courthouse. Revenue was $684 million in 2025: 59 per cent from residential broadband, 18 per cent from business services and 15 per cent from a video service we are allowing to shrink. A private equity fund managed by Granmoor Capital Partners has owned 84 per cent of the company since 2018, and we carry $1.53 billion of net debt.
I have worked on the money behind rural connections for twenty-nine years: auditing telephone cooperatives and small cable systems, keeping the books of a family telephone company in western Kansas that lived on support formulas, running the controller's office at a station group that collected retransmission fees from cable operators, and financing tower backhaul for an infrastructure-owned fibre company in Tulsa. I joined Ridgeburn in March 2021, about a year before mobile carriers began selling fixed-wireless home internet in almost every town we serve.
That competition changed what my job is for. A cable operator used to be judged on homes passed and on subscriber totals that only rose. Ours had included apartments billed to landlords, free storm-relief accounts and empty lots. I had restated them a year before fixed wireless arrived, so the losses reached the board at their true size, and every capital decision since has been measured against customers who pay.
Customer figures a lender could audit
In early 2022 I restated our broadband customers from 357,200 to 342,900 and our footprint from 1,080,000 homes passed to 1,019,000 serviceable locations. The incentive plan, including my own award, was rebased on the smaller figures.
Fibre released one tranche at a time
Our $520 million fibre programme releases each tranche only after the previous towns pass cost, take-up and churn tests. By December 2025, 236,000 locations had been upgraded at an average construction cost of $1,115 each, and monthly churn in fibre towns had fallen from 1.9 to 1.2 per cent.
A maturity refinanced without a dividend
In May 2024, seventeen months before a $1.24 billion term loan fell due, we closed a $1.25 billion private-credit unitranche with a $200 million delayed-draw tranche for fibre. We accepted about 75 basis points more than a syndicated alternative and declined a $175 million distribution to our owner.
A video service that now pays its way
We stopped buying set-top boxes, ended promotional video bundles and dropped a regional sports network in 2023. Video customers fell from 129,000 to 84,000 over three years, while video contribution moved from a $4 million loss in 2022 to an $11 million profit in 2025.
Current focus
I am preparing the board's decision on the third fibre tranche: 96,000 locations in towns where electric cooperatives own most of the poles and make-ready costs are hardest to predict. Alongside it, I am rebuilding grant compliance reporting so that every subsidised location can be traced from the award, to the drop, to the first paid bill.
Conversations I welcome
I am not looking for another executive role while the fibre programme is under way. I would consider one independent directorship at a US-listed or sponsor-backed company outside telecommunications, joining the audit committee and, after a year, chairing it if the board wished. I can give about twenty-five days a year, with the consent of Ridgeburn's board, and I accept a few invitations to speak to finance and rural broadband audiences.
Beyond the page
The record behind the perspective.
In the boardroom
Ashby Creek Community FoundationDirector and chair of the finance committee · 2019–present
Formation
Bachelor of Science in Agricultural EconomicsMedora State University · 1996
Master of AccountancyMedora State University · 1997
When Evelyn proposed restating our customer count, her paper arrived with the reconciliation, the effect on the incentive plan and a draft letter to lenders. I have never had to ask her what a figure includes. She tells the committee before it occurs to us to ask.
Lorraine AshdownFictional independent manager and audit committee chair, Ridgeburn CommunicationsThe full record ↗
Contact
I am not looking for another executive role while the fibre programme is under way. I would consider one independent directorship at a US-listed or sponsor-backed company outside telecommunications, joining the audit committee and, after a year, chairing it if the board wished. I can give about twenty-five days a year, with the consent of Ridgeburn's board, and I accept a few invitations to speak to finance and rural broadband audiences.
