Mounting net subscriber losses made 2024 the worst year ever for cable's broadband business, but there are reasons for optimism in 2025, MoffettNathanson's Craig Moffett told investors last week. The rate of growth and share gain of fixed wireless access and fiber overbuilding are "unmistakably decelerating," he said. Moreover, subscriber losses should be much smaller this year, especially with the end of the Affordable Connectivity Program no longer hurting results. He said AT&T entering the fixed wireless market hasn't fully offset the deceleration of Verizon and T-Mobile in that space. It's doubtful whether the pace of fiber overbuilding continues, he said, adding SpaceX's Starlink satellite broadband will likely remain a player in rural markets only.

Download speeds of Comcast's and Charter's mobile services have increased more than 100 Mbps in the past two years, driven by the cable operators offloading some traffic onto their Wi-Fi networks, Ookla said Tuesday. Ookla examined 2023 and 2024 internet speed test data for the two cable operators. Charter Spectrum Mobile customers have seen median download speeds go from 84.35 Mbps to 188.63 Mbps, it said. Comcast Xfinity Mobile users saw download speeds increase from 66.60 Mbps in Q3 2023 to 170.39 Mbps a year later. Hardware improvements, such as Comcast upgrading its network from DOCSIS 3.1 to DOCSIS 4.0, and the ongoing replacement of older handsets with newer ones, will continue to result in better customer experience, it said.

Fiber has been part of cable networks for years, and is taking on increasing importance as cable operators use its capabilities in new ways, CableLabs Principal Architect Matt Schmitt wrote Tuesday. Cable operators are moving fiber portions of their networks from analog to digital, as well as pushing fiber deeper into the networks and closer to the customer, he wrote.

New York state's Mid-Hudson Fiber has set 1 Gbps symmetrical as its minimum plan speed, it said Friday. Existing customers will be upgraded automatically at no additional cost.

Cable One, with a 45% ownership stake in Mega Broadband Investments/Vyve Broadband, has amended the terms of its Vyve investment to give it better timing flexibility for a takeover of that company, Cable One said last week. Under the amended partnership agreement, Cable One said it paid $250 million to other Vyve equity holders, who also received the proceeds from $100 million of new Vyve debt. That $350 million will reduce the purchase price payable by Cable One, it said. Cable One said it has an option to call the 55% of Vyve it doesn't own, which it can exercise starting in Q3 2025.

The worst of Charter Communications' loss of broadband subscribers has likely passed, MoffettNathanson's Craig Moffett wrote Thursday. Fixed wireless access growth should slow, and the pace of fiber overbuilds will moderate, he said. Mobile and broadband revenue should accelerate. "To be sure, we don’t expect Charter to reclaim the growth rates it enjoyed post-COVID," he said, adding he expects revenue growth in the low to mid-single digit percentages.

Cable operators moving to 10G won't max out their legacy hybrid fiber coaxial networks, as they have 15 to 20 years of capacity growth in them, Vecima Chief Technology Officer Colin Howlett said Thursday during an SCTE webinar. In addition, Howlett said cable operators will make a variety of DOCSIS 4.0 announcements in 2025, complementing the Comcast/Charter Communications/Broadcom announcement in September that they're collaborating on a unified DOCSIS chipset for such equipment as modems and nodes. A lot of cable operators that were planning DOCSIS 3.1 upgrades instead may reevaluate those plans and go with the DOCSIS 4.0 specification, enabled by those chipsets, he said.

Comcast Business Services is buying managed services provider Nitel, with the aim of using Nitel's services to expand its presence in connectivity, global secure networking and advanced technology, Comcast said Wednesday. It didn't disclose financial terms.

Charter Communications should launch its "video store" in the first half of 2025, CEO Chris Winfrey said Tuesday at UBS' Media and Communications Conference. Subscribers will be able to manage their video services, including direct-to-consumer streaming services they access via Charter, at the video store. He didn't provide an estimate of Q4 residential broadband results but said Charter will likely see more than 100,000 disconnects due to the end of the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), as well as larger-than-expected impacts from the fall's hurricanes. The hurricanes will likely cost Charter 30,000 subscribers, though most will return. Winfrey said cable internet service providers have done a subpar job of telling subscribers that "cellphone internet" fixed wireless is lower quality and costs more. He said Charter is retaining most of its 5+ million ACP subscribers, with fewer than 10% leaving. But those subscribers are more likely to bounce between having connectivity and being unconnected, he said.

Comcast will likely see Q4 residential broadband subscriber losses in excess of 100,000, Comcast Cable CEO Dave Watson said Monday at UBS' Media and Communications Conference. Residential broadband competition "remains ... intense," especially competition for more price-conscious subscribers, Watson told attendees. Churn among mid-tier and higher-end subscribers on packages of 500 Mbps and faster remains near record lows. The two fall hurricanes will end up costing Comcast around 10,000 broadband subscriber losses in Q4. The company's 2025 priorities are growing its connectivity businesses of broadband, mobile and business services, Watson said. He was dismissive of fiber competition, saying while there's short-term competitive pain, market shares level out after the market matures. Comcast believes the $181 billion mobile marketplace is a major growth opportunity, especially when mobile is bundled with broadband, Watson said. Moreover, the company is expanding business services via dedicated Ethernet over its hybrid fiber-coaxial network. Dedicated business service will see an additional 3.5 million business passings in 2025. Asked about Comcast's interest in having a licensed spectrum network for its mobile business, Watson said the company has "really liked our position for a very long time" relying on Verizon's mobile virtual network operator agreement. Comcast continues testing its citizens broadband radio service spectrum to offload some mobile traffic, he added.