Cord-cutting will see the most widely distributed cable networks, like C-SPAN and Food Network, lose 15 million to 20 million subscribers by 2029, S&P Global said in an analysis Friday. The average cable network will likely lose subscribers at an average annual rate of 5.4%, it said, with numbers dropping from 29.8 million this year to 23.8 million in 2029. It noted that only six cable networks grew year-end subscriber numbers between 2023 and 2024. Basic cable networks in the U.S. averaged a 7.1% decline in subscribers last year, marking the ninth consecutive year of declining subscribers for the industry due to cord-cutting, S&P added.

Comments are due Oct. 6, replies Oct. 21, about the transfer of various Cox Communications licenses and authorizations to Charter Communications as part of Charter's proposed $34.5 billion purchase of Cox (see 2505160060), the FCC Wireline Bureau said Friday (docket 25-233).

WideOpenWest said Thursday that its greenfield market fiber buildout has now passed 100,000 homes. That puts it a quarter of the way to its goal, announced in 2022, of passing 400,000 homes with fiber in untapped markets in coming years, it said.

Illinois' Casscomm said last week it's boosting broadband speeds at no additional cost. It said its 75 Mbps symmetrical Essential package is going to 100 Mbps symmetrical, and its 300 Mbps symmetrical Stream package is moving up to 500 Mbps symmetrical, effective this week. It has also launched an Ultra package of 2 Gbps symmetrical.

The cable industry is urging the FCC to adopt shot clocks for review of rights-of-way permits and to bar moratoriums on right-of-way access. In a meeting with FCC Wireline Bureau staff, NCTA, Comcast, Charter Communications and Cox Enterprises representatives also pushed for a prohibition on onerous requirements or conditions to receive right-of-way permits, said a filing posted Wednesday in docket 17-84.

Charter Communications' proposed purchase of Cox Communications might have faced DOJ and FCC opposition under the Biden administration, with its reliance on market-share snapshots when pursuing antitrust claims, Mercatus Senior Research Fellow Alden Abbott wrote last week. But the $34.5 billion Charter/Cox deal, announced in May (see 2505160060), "should have a clear path forward" under current DOJ and FCC leadership, given signs that the Trump administration wants to reinstate "a commonsense, fact-based, and economically centered merger-review policy," said Abbott, a former FTC general counsel. Under the Supreme Court's Brown Shoe test for assessing if a transaction will lessen competition, Charter/Cox doesn't eliminate an existing rivalry, raise entry barriers or accelerate harmful concentration, he said. The two have minimal overlap, and there's booming growth of new broadband competitors, Abbott added.

A multi-vendor CableLabs event on DOCSIS 4.0 earlier this month was able to hit 16 Gbps download speeds, showing that the technology is commercially viable for multi-gigabit service deployment, it said Thursday. "This wasn’t an isolated 'best case' setup," as several configurations reached double-digit gigabit speeds, CableLabs said. That shows DOCSIS 4.0 technology "isn’t just an incremental step -- it’s a foundation for ... service tiers that can compete head-to-head with fiber." CableLabs said next steps include starting the migration path toward DOCSIS 4.0 technology.

Altice USA's broadband business is starting to stabilize, CEO Dennis Mathew said Thursday as the company announced its Q2 financial results. The 35,000 broadband subscriber losses in Q2 were an improvement both year over year and compared with Q1, Mathew said, chalking it up to better retention efforts, improved sales performance and network investments. He said churn was also down. Altice ended Q2 with 3.9 million residential broadband subscribers, versus 4.1 million in Q2 2024; and 1.7 million residential video subscribers, versus 2 million. It had 546,000 mobile lines, compared with 385,000 a year earlier. The addition of 38,000 mobile lines in the quarter was down from Q1 in the face of ongoing competitive and macroeconomic pressures, Mathew said. The company expects to see mobile growth year over year in the back half of 2025, he added. Revenues were $2.2 billion for the quarter, down $100 million.

Comcast and Charter Communications' most recent quarters show that while cable broadband "is in free fall, [the providers'] wireless offers are quietly crushing the competition," Recon Analytics’ Roger Entner wrote Tuesday in a thread on X. Charter lost 117,000 broadband subscribers, but it gained 500,000 wireless subscribers while covering only 40% of the U.S., he said. "If they operated nationwide, they'd be adding over a million and making T-Mobile's numbers look small."

Cable One will test a mobile offering in some of its markets starting later this year, CEO Julie Laulis said Thursday. In a call with analysts to announce the company's Q2 financial results, Laulis said it has signed an agreement with a mobile virtual network enabler for the pilot offering. Cable One reported Q2 revenue of $381.1 million, down from $394.5 million during the same three months in 2024. The decline was largely due to fewer video subscribers, it said. The quarter also ended with 932,000 residential data customers, compared with 963,000 in Q2 the year before. Laulis said Cable One isn't expecting to grow its residential broadband customer base this year -- June was the first month in 2025 with year-over-year increases in broadband additions. The company attributed the broadband customer losses to pricing and packaging changes, competition and the end of certain promotions, although that still led to a slight increase in residential broadband revenue over Q1. Cable One's simplified pricing and new marketing are setting the stage for stronger subscriber growth over time, Laulis added. She also noted that about 53% of locations in Cable One's footprint have fiber-to-the-home overbuilding, and fixed wireless "is nearly ubiquitous."