Charter Communications sees broadband subscriber competition from fixed wireless access (FWA) having peaked and predicts that fiber overbuilding will slow down. In a call with analysts Friday as Charter reported its Q4 2024 results, CEO Chris Winfrey said the broadband environment is "still competitive in terms of fiber and cellphone internet overlap." But, he said, "we better be better this year than we were ... last year" -- especially with the loss of the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) no longer dragging down results, as it did in the second half of 2024. Charter executives used the term "cellphone internet" five times in Friday's call.
With the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) out of the picture, Lifeline's monthly benefits aren't covering the growing broadband affordability gap, the National Lifeline Association said in a letter to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr posted Wednesday (docket 21-450). NaLA said its most recent survey of more than 68,000 consumers found that 40% of respondents reduced their food spending to afford the monthly internet bill, 20% indicated they were unable to work remotely or accept shift work, and nearly 20% said their children were having difficulty completing homework. In addition, 36% reported having discontinued telehealth after ACP ended in 2024, and 70% said they relied on ACP and/or Lifeline benefits to access healthcare services, including telehealth. Lifeline’s $9.25 monthly subsidy “comes nowhere close to making basic retail internet service offerings affordable,” NaLA said, since most prepaid mobile broadband plans with at least 5GB of data and mobile hot spot cost $30 or more, and none offer a free smartphone. NaLA said it pushed for interim funding for a reformed ACP, and it supports long-term funding for a single low-income support program inside the USF.
Joe Kane, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation broadband and spectrum policy director, urged Congress Monday to “create a more targeted and durable” version of the FCC’s lapsed affordable connectivity program “by aligning funding priorities with the remaining causes of the digital divide." Kane added: "By prioritizing affordability rather than deployment, the new program can connect low-income households without new federal spending.” He suggested Congress should revise ACP rules to provide its previous $30 monthly broadband subsidy but restrict it to “households at or below 135 percent of the federal poverty level or in their first three months of unemployment insurance.” Now-Vice President-elect JD Vance and Senate Communications Subcommittee then-Chairman Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., in May proposed the same change to ACP eligibility as part of an unsuccessful bid to give the program $6 billion in stopgap funding via an FCC reauthorization package (see 2405080047). There “is good reason to think” ACP’s eligibility criteria, including allowing a household to qualify if its combined income were up to 200% of the federal poverty line, “were overinclusive,” Kane said. He discounted proposals restricting ACP funding to first-time broadband subscribers, saying objections “on these grounds make the category mistake of conflating affordability with choices made under a budget constraint.”
New Street’s Blair Levin on Wednesday slammed the $20 billion rural digital opportunity fund, calling it a huge failure, during a Broadband Breakfast webinar. Approved under former President Donald Trump, RDOF has its defenders, including FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, who has called it a bigger success than the BEAD program, which President Joe Biden approved (see 2409270032).
California's top assemblymember on communications is concerned about the state's process for distributing broadband cash and what President-elect Donald Trump might do to its $1.86 billion federal BEAD allocation. In an exclusive Communications Daily Q&A ahead of Monday's opening of the new legislative session, Assembly Communications and Conveyance Committee Chair Tasha Boerner (D) said she expects she will resurrect her proposal that creates a single state broadband office. And the committee will try again on a digital discrimination bill that failed to pass in the last session. Our conversation below with Boerner was lightly edited for length and clarity.
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.
Much of FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr's agenda as the agency's incoming chair doesn't require an FCC majority to move forward, New Street Research's Blair Levin noted Monday. Part of that is because Carr can get Congress to act, and some is due to the delegated authority FCC bureaus have, Levin said. Carr's efforts to investigate tech companies and amplify the voice of conservatives on social media platforms don't require a formal FCC proceeding, he said. For example, Carr can tie up Skydance's proposed Paramount purchase, which would signal other networks that unfavorable news coverage could affect M&A approvals. In addition, Carr could have the FCC general counsel issue a policy statement about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that eliminates the expansive immunities courts have read into the statute, Levin said. And Carr doesn't need a majority to stop work on items with which he disagrees, such as bulk billing rules, Levin said. Outgoing Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel "never effectively used her bully pulpit [and thus] had the least consequential term as Chair in modern FCC history," he argued. She failed on such issues as losing spectrum auction authority and not getting an extension of the affordable connectivity program, Levin said. Mentioning Levin's note during a Practising Law Institute event Tuesday, Carr said Levin would need “a food taster” at that night's FCBA annual dinner. Levin's note is a reminder that “it's all downhill from here" for his upcoming stint as chairman, Carr said. “They like you on the way in, they definitely do not on the way out, and I don't expect that pattern to be broken any time soon,” he said. Rosenworcel Chief of Staff Narda Jones said during a different PLI panel that she hadn't read Levin's essay but that her boss was proud of the FCC’s work “to reach communities and stakeholders who haven't necessarily been the focus of the commission's work before.” She pointed to the ACP, formation of the Space Bureau, maternal health mapping, and the Missing and Endangered Persons alarm code as important achievements of the Rosenworcel FCC.
Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Ted Cruz, R-Texas, could shift the direction Congress’ USF revamp takes when he becomes the panel’s chairman in January, lawmakers and lobbyists told us. Observers believe his impact on what Congress decides will partially depend on how the U.S. Supreme Court rules when it reviews the FCC appeal of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling in favor of Consumers' Research's challenge of the USF contribution methodology (see 2411220050). A high court ruling upholding the 5th Circuit could shift momentum in favor of Cruz’s proposal that Congress make USF funding part of the appropriations process, officials said.
A possible shakeup of the federal Universal Service Fund (USF) will be top of mind for state telecom regulators in the year ahead, NARUC Telecom Committee Chair Tim Schram said in an interview earlier this month at the association’s Anaheim meeting. USF is one of several areas of uncertainty in 2025, said three state consumer advocates in a separate interview at the collocated National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates (NASUCA) conference.
A plan for cutting regulations and federal institutions such as the FCC could target broadband access programs and media regulations, but it's likely that a wave of litigation will stymie it, administrative law professors and attorneys told us. Future Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) heads Vivek Ramasawamy and Space X CEO Elon Musk laid out their plans in a Wall Street Journal opinion column. “It's not to say that maybe some of these changes shouldn't be happening, but, you know, they're taking a wrecking ball to fix something that requires a little bit more finesse than that,” said University of Idaho law professor Linda Jellum. Asked about possible DOGE cuts at the FCC, incoming FCC Chairman Brendan Carr last week told reporters, “There's no question, there's tons of room for driving more efficiency at the FCC." He didn't elaborate.