Pointing to Comcast's broadband business facing headwinds due to fixed wireless and fiber competition and the discontinuation of the affordable connectivity program, Deutsche Bank Research said Monday it was lowering the cabler's stock price target by $2, to $53. In a note to investors, an analyst said it was upping Comcast's 2024 broadband subscriber loss forecast by 285,000, to 435,000, mostly due to ACP-related churn: It's assuming 15% of Comcast's roughly 1.4 million ACP subscribers will disconnect without the subsidy, costing Comcast 210,000 subs across Q2 and Q3.

Comments are due April 26 to the Library of Congress' Copyright Royalty Board on a pending motion seeking distribution of 40% of the 2021 cable royalties collected for the retransmission to cable subscribers of over-the-air television and radio broadcast signals, said a notice in Friday's Federal Register.

Ohio's Jefferson County Cable TV will pay a $10,000 civil penalty to end an FCC investigation into the company's broadband data reporting practices, according to an Enforcement Bureau consent decree in Monday's Daily Digest. The bureau said that after an individual challenged the company's reported broadband service provision data, Jefferson County Cable acknowledged it hadn't properly reviewed and understood the FCC's guidance on broadband data collection filings and that about 1,500 locations reported as receiving service were removed from the company's filings.

The Better Business Bureau's National Advertising Division (NAD) is recommending Charter Communications drop or modify advertising claims that Verizon customers will save more than $1,500 in their first year by switching to Charter's Spectrum Mobile. NAD said Wednesday the ad claim doesn't make clear that it's comparing the lowest-tier Spectrum Mobile plan with a Verizon plan not at the bottom of its tier. In addition, the ad isn't clear that Spectrum Internet is required for the Spectrum Mobile offer, it said. NAD said that Charter indicated it disagreed that its ad disclosures were insufficient but will comply with the recommendations to improve disclosures.

Making cable operators provide an "all-in" price in ads and promotional materials "would be intrusive and uninformative," according to cable interests. In a docket 23-203 filing last week recapping a meeting with FCC Media Bureau Chief Holly Saurer, NCTA, Comcast, Charter and Cox said fees vary from region to region. In addition, they said all-in pricing would necessitate geo-targeting advertised prices, "which is highly impractical [and] technically challenging," or that the ads and promos would have to reflect a wide range of fees that might not apply and would be of little use to consumers. They said any all-in price requirement should let cable operators exclude fees that vary based on location, as long as operators include a statement in the ad that refers to those fees and indicates the amount depends on the customer's location. The FCC's all-in price proposal also should exclude fees that are variable for each subscriber and government-imposed taxes and fees, the cabers said.

Altice saw a second consecutive year of declining residential broadband subscribers in 2023. Announcing its Q4 results after the market's close Wednesday, Altice said it ended the year with 4.2 million residential broadband primary service units, down 114,000 from the end of 2022. It lost 103,000 in 2022. In a call with analysts, Chief Financial Officer Marc Sirota noted a "challenging macroeconomic environment" for the 27,000 subs lost in Q4. CEO Dennis Mathew said Altice saw competitors in Q4 "really outspending us in advertising and marketing ... effectively reducing our share of voice in the market." Altice was accelerating its mobile and fiber growth, said Mathew, noting its fiber penetration reached more than 12% of its footprint by the end of 2023. He said the 8 Gbps symmetrical speeds the carrier offers on its fiber network to more than 2.7 million subscribers offers "a strong competitive advantage everywhere we overlap with a fiber competitor in the Northeast." Fiber network growth is a chief goal for this year, said the CEO, with Sirota adding fiber passings will expand to 3 million homes by 2024's end. Mathew said fixed wireless competitors were aggressively courting its mobile subs with lower-end data plans. He said Altice's western markets were seeing aggressive fiber overbuilding. The company is now about 40% overbuilt. Having launched Optimum Stream last year as its main video product, Altice will roll out additional video package options this year, the CEO said. Asked about the ESPN/Fox/Warner Bros. Discovery streaming sports joint venture (see 2402070006), Mathew said it points to the "broken" traditional linear video model, with viewership at record lows while rates are at all-time highs. During talks with programmers, Altice is pushing for its video subscribers gaining access to the programmers' streaming services, he said. The 27,000 subscribers lost was worse than the 20,000 Wall Street had expected, and most of its financial metrics were better than expected, though still declining, MoffettNathanson's Craig Moffett wrote.

The cable industry and local franchise authorities are at odds over the mixed-use rule, with both sides presenting conflicting takes in FCC lobbying last week. LFA arguments that the mixed-use rule doesn't follow the law and should be repealed (see 2401080032) are incorrect, NCTA said Thursday in docket 05-311. It said the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the FCC rule, "finding that the statutory interpretation embodied in the rule is compelled by the plain and unambiguous language." NCTA said the LFAs' argument that only the cost of an LFA's use of an institutional network -- and not the cost of the network's construction -- counts toward the 5% cap on cable franchise fees also runs contrary to the 6th Circuit decision. LFAs including Los Angeles County, Dallas and Boston in the docket recapped a meeting with Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel's office when they urged that the agency remand its 2019 LFA order that was subject of the 6th Circuit decision so that FCC rules don't "continue to misrepresent the state of the law, leading to confusion and opportunities for obfuscation."

Echoing its decision on a Verizon complaint (see 2401310009), the Better Business Bureau's National Advertising Review Board sided with T-Mobile against Comcast advertising. The board said Monday that, as with Verizon, it agreed with T-Mobile that Comcast's use of "10G" in its Xfinity 10G Network product name and description was misleading.

Eighty-six percent of consumers who recently obtained high-speed internet service say the service has improved their lives, Cox Communications said Thursday. Pointing to a poll done in December of 551 high-speed internet customers in new market areas previously considered unversed or underserved, Cox said 62% of respondents’ reported improved access to online jobs and remote work.

Comcast should drop "10G" from the name of its Xfinity 10G Network, the Better Business Bureau's National Advertising Review Board recommended Wednesday. The board upheld a Comcast-appealed decision by BBB's National Advertising Division against the use of "10G." The board said using 10G, which Verizon challenged, "expressly communicates ... that users of the Xfinity network will experience significantly faster speeds than are available on 5G networks," but there's no data comparing Xfinity network speeds with speeds 5G network subscribers experience. The board said Comcast agreed to modify its advertising.