Item 2. Properties
ITEM 2. PROPERTIES
Our property, plant and equipment consists principally of fiber-optic and metallic cables, high-speed transport equipment, electronics, switches, routers, cable landing stations, central office equipment, land and buildings related to our operations. Our gross property, plant and equipment consisted of the following components:
As of December 31,
2020 2019
Land 1 % 2 %
Fiber, conduit and other outside plant (1)
46 % 45 %
Central office and other network electronics (2)
36 % 35 %
Support assets (3)
14 % 14 %
Construction in progress (4)
3 % 4 %
Gross property, plant and equipment 100 % 100 %
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(1) Fiber, conduit and other outside plant consists of fiber and metallic cables, conduit, poles and other supporting structures.
(2) Central office and other network electronics consists of circuit and packet switches, routers, transmission electronics and electronics providing service to customers.
(3) Support assets consist of buildings, cable landing stations, data centers, computers and other administrative and support equipment.
(4) Construction in progress includes inventory held for construction and property of the aforementioned categories that is under construction and has not yet been placed in service.
We own substantially all of our telecommunications equipment required for our business. However, we lease from third parties certain facilities, plant, equipment under various finance and operating lease arrangements when the leasing arrangements are more favorable to us than purchasing the assets. We also own and lease administrative offices in major metropolitan locations both in the United States and internationally. Substantially all of our network electronics equipment is located in buildings or on land that we own or lease, typically within our local service area. Outside of our local service area, our assets are generally located on real property pursuant to an agreement with the property owner or another person with rights to the property. It is possible that we may lose our rights under one or more of these agreements, due to their termination or expiration or in connection with legal challenges to our rights under such agreements. With the acquisition of Level 3 on November 1, 2017, we acquired, among other things, title or leasehold rights to various cable landing stations and data centers throughout the world related to undersea and terrestrial cable systems.
Our net property, plant and equipment was approximately $26.3 billion and $26.1 billion at December 31, 2020 and 2019, respectively. Substantial portions of our property, plant and equipment is pledged to secure the long-term debt of our subsidiaries or the guarantee obligations of our subsidiary guarantors. For additional information, see Note 8—Property, Plant and Equipment to our consolidated financial statements in Item 8 of Part II of this report.