back a state of the art. And when we compare all the external KPIs like churn, penetration, ARPU et cetera, they are very close to our Fios footprint. And we know Fios is the best fiber operation in the country. So there’s a lot of things playing into it. And then, of course, economics is very important piece of it. We looked at buy versus build, of course, and it was a pretty easy calculation accretive from the day of the acquisition, both on revenue growth as well as EBITDA, maybe one year later on EPS and cash flow, mainly because we account a little bit different, and then we have some investment for IT systems. That’s the only reason. So it makes sense financially, strategically, operationally, scale, our scale is going to be enormous. It’s already #1 in basically everything we’re doing. Now we’re just adding more strength to that, very good, so now since — that’s a long answer, sorry.
James Schneider Goldman Sachs - Analyst
No, no, no, it wasn’t. Some investors I’ve spoken to are trying to figure out a few different aspects of the transaction. So maybe we could talk about a few of these in turns if we could. You’ve been quite bullish about the prospects for building and growing your fixed wireless footprint to much larger scale. How are you thinking about fixed wireless versus fiber as strategic priorities for Verizon? And why doesn’t the increased emphasis on fiber? Would this deal mean there’s some kind of pullback on the fixed wireless strategy.
Hans Vestberg
So first of all, I think about the customers. I think that the optionality we create with the network, and some of you might remember when I came into Verizon I started the Verizon Intelligent Edge Network, which basically, it’s a fiberized and uniformed routing system. So basically, all the accesses built on the same system. Adding then optionality at the edge for our customers, some customers just love fixed wireless access. It’s by far the highest NPS we’ve had on the broadband product. And remember, then we have Fios (sic) [company correction: FWA] because it’s a self-installed, it’s so easy. So you need to have that in the portfolio. And then you need fiber, which is the best performing. So for us, we want to give optionality for our customers. So doing the Frontier deal does not change anything in my appetite to continue with fixed wireless access. I think it’s just a unique product that is just competing well. Remember, when we deploy our capital for wireless, our #1 priority is mobility. Then we get the secondary business case on the same radio base stations or the same radio technology, which is the fixed wireless access. And that’s how we do it today, and that’s how we are created. So way over 3 million customers on fixed wireless access today. And as I said before, when I come to 4 million to 5 million fixed wireless access customers, I will come back to the market and talk about our overall broadband strategy. And for anyone that can count there’s only days until we’re there probably. And then I will come back and talk in more general terms how we continue with fixed wireless access, how we continue with broadband in general, but — so I don’t see that this is doing anything to my strategy on fixed wireless access. Again, it’s all about seeing that you are meeting the customers. And remember, fixed wireless access is great for small and medium businesses, for enterprises, for consumers, the same goes for fiber.
James Schneider Goldman Sachs - Analyst
Very good. And then on the fiber strategy, maybe frame for us your long-term ambitions in fiber, just to frame it for the audience, cable has roughly 60 million or so passings. One of your competitors is talking about 40 to 45. And I guess, how big do you want to be and to me, it speaks...
Hans Vestberg
Usually we don’t talk too much about what we have in the future. I do what I have. But obviously, with the footprint of probably 60 million households on fixed wireless access, and when we close this deal, we estimate the Frontier deal will take some 18 months. They will almost be at 10 million. So we will have 30 million fiber (sic) [company clarification: 27 million to 28 million fiber passings] as well, passing that we’re going to have a very sizable — one of the most sizable broadband networks in the country, probably the biggest. So I think I’m going to sort of — I stop there and I think that, that is a great first step for us. Then, of course, we will continue to be financially disciplined and continue rollout. I mean we started Fios in 2004. We are 20 years into fiber, but no one has been as long as we have been in fiber. We do 400,000 to 500,000 households every year, high penetration, good margins. And it takes some time to learn that and also make money on it. So we — I think that we will continue to invest both in fiber and fixed wireless access going forward to create that optionality for our customers, and at the same time, having the nation’s best wireless networks, that’s sort of the whole strategy we have.