Charter and Comcast See Ongoing Fiber and Fixed-Wireless Pressure
Comcast and Charter continue to be hammered with fiber and fixed-wireless access (FWA) competition in residential broadband, though their wireless businesses are still growing. Between fiber overbuilding and FWA, "in any market, when you have new competition ... there's going to be a short-term impact on us," Charter CEO Chris Winfrey said in a call with analysts Friday as the cable ISP announced Q3 results.
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Charter said it ended the quarter with 27.8 million residential internet subscribers, versus 28.2 million in Q3 2024. It also reported 11.4 million mobile lines, up from 9.4 million in Q3 a year earlier.
Comcast said much the same when it announced its Q3 results last week. Broadband "remains intensely competitive," and that won't change anytime soon, President Mike Cavanagh told analysts. Eventually, he said, most broadband markets will be two multi-gig symmetrical providers dominating, with limited-capacity alternatives serving the rest. FWA "remains a durable competitor."
Comcast ended the quarter with 29 million residential internet subscribers, down 500,000 from its total at the end of Q3 2024, the company said. It reported 8.9 million wireless lines at the end of the quarter, up from 7.5 million a year earlier. It also lost 104,000 broadband subscribers in Q3.
Comcast CFO Jason Armstrong said it wouldn't hike broadband prices in early 2026, and average revenue per user would be hit in Q4 as the company ramps up its use of free wireless lines to attract subscribers and moves to more consistent pricing. "Now Cable has to convince skeptical investors that broadband prices" won't keep falling, MoffettNathanson Craig Moffett noted Friday.
Charter's Winfrey said its video subscriber losses continued to slow. It ended Q3 with 12.6 million video customers, compared with 13 million in Q3 2024. The 70,000 lost in Q3, versus 294,000 lost in Q3 a year earlier, were due to product improvements over the past two years, he added.
Comcast said it ended Q3 with 11.5 million video subscribers, down from 12.8 million in Q3 2024. Cavanagh said subscriber losses in the quarter were down more than 100,000 from the same quarter a year earlier.
Charter CFO Jessica Fischer said the company added 124,000 subsidized rural passings in Q3 and expects to finish 2025 with 450,000 additional subsidized rural passings. It bid for BEAD projects in 20 states and was awarded subsidies for about 84,000 passings. Charter also expects to spend about $230 million of its own money to build out those passings during the next several years, she added.
Winfrey said Charter has cut its use of macro cell towers by 20% in the past three years, instead using Wi-Fi, its citizens radio band spectrum deployment and partner cable networks. He also noted that 88% of Spectrum's mobile traffic is carried on its own network.