07/2024, Read More

Cape Cod has a connectivity crisis, and internet users are underserved by Comcast, the primary internet provider on the Cape. The crisis is brought on by lack of competition with internet service providers, lack of infrastructure investment by Comcast and a need for better speed test reporting from users. “We have trouble all the time with our internet,” local shop owner Amanda Converse said. “We’re consistently kicked off our Wi-Fi when trying to run transactions. Sometimes it’s questionable if we can run credit cards. I’m consistently dropped from Zoom calls.”

Comcast has the highest prices and poorest service documented by the Massachusetts Broadband Institute.

04/2022, Read More

These two cable giants’ [Comcast’s and Charter’s] market share continues to grow not really because they’re good— but because they’re the only option countless Americans have if they want modern-era broadband speeds.

As Comcast dominates a market, it exploits the lack of competition not only to routinely raise rates (even during a pandemic, as it turns out) but to also impose all manner of arbitrary usage restrictions and obnoxious, unnecessary fees, allowing it to drive up the advertised price even further. In a bid to justify market failure, monopolization, and the corruption and regulatory capture that protects it, policymakers will often point to some looming technological innovation just over the horizon that will make all of this better without intervention.

02/2022, Read More

A lengthy and widespread internet outage in Haverhill, Mass. brought down WHAV and shuttered offices throughout the Ward Hill Business Park, the city’s largest economic engine. The nine-hour outage disconnected businesses from customers and even their own corporate offices. Haverhill City Councilor John A. Michitson, who has long advocated attracting another broadband provider to Haverhill, frequently argues Comcast’s monopoly puts the city at a disadvantage.

08/2022, Read More

If our new mayor, Justin Bibb, really wants to bridge the digital divide in Cleveland, then he needs to stop the plague on the city…that would be the monopoly that Time Warner, now Spectrum cable, has on Cleveland. Currently, I pay over $200 dollars a month for the lowest cable and internet service that spectrum offers. That is outrageous. Some healthy competition would help lower the costs of these services for people who are on a fixed income, like me.

08/2024, Read More

As time has marched on, however, so has the technology behind high-speed internet. But it’s not cable companies like Charter’s Spectrum and Comcast’s Xfinity setting up the infrastructure for those alternative connections. Telecom outfits like Verizon Communications and AT&T, and even mobile service provider T-Mobile US, have been making these investments. Now they’re reaping the benefits.

To put the trends into numerical perspective, while Comcast and Charter collectively lost 269,000 broadband subscribers in the second quarter of this year, Verizon added nearly 400,000, as did T-Mobile. AT&T picked up a little over 50,000. In all five cases, last quarter’s results extend nascent trends.

For traditional telecoms like Verizon and AT&T, there’s now a promising growth engine in place. Charter and Comcast are at the other end of this spectrum. More than one-fifth of Comcast’s revenue comes from its high-speed internet arm, while nearly half of Charter’s top line is driven by its broadband service. Their hold on this industry is slowly slipping away.

06/2024, Read More

“5G FWA services have been on a dramatic growth trajectory in the US, absorbing all broadband subscriber growth in the market since mid-2022 and amassing more than 600-700 thousand net adds per quarter,” wrote Opensignal’s Robert Wyrzykowski. “This is despite the USA being a mature broadband market with nearly 97% broadband adoption and modest household growth.” …Indeed, the nation’s cable companies have recorded historic declines in their core Internet businesses amid the growth of FWA in the US.

The financial analysts at TD Cowen predict the US cable industry will collectively lose more than half a million customers in the second quarter of this year. They attribute that decline to FWA competition as well as other factors including the end of the US government’s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP)…”The pain for cable may continue for longer than expected as the ability for cable to return to broadband subscriber growth may take longer (if ever),” wrote the TD Cowen analysts in a recent note to investors.

Others agree. “Wireless players have the advantage over cable providers when capacity is available for FWA given the marginal cost advantage of bundling services on one network, which is likely to persist for at least the next 2-3 years,” the S&P analysts wrote in a recent report.

03/2024, Read More

Cable operator broadband services have long dominated the US market, challenged only by telco wireline (including fibre-to-the-premises) services – until 5G lit a fire under the FWA sector…While the FWA services sector is booming, the cable and wireline broadband services sectors are in decline, according to the numbers collated by the Leichtman Research team.

02/2024, Read More

First, cable and fiber companies dismissed fixed wireless access (FWA) completely. Then, they passed it off as a temporary fad. Subscribers, they said, will return to their wireline providers when wireless bandwidth inevitably runs out. While that may still prove true in the long run, the team at New Street Research (NSR) indicated things aren’t exactly looking pretty in the short term.

During earnings, Charter CEO Chris Winfrey admitted broadband growth in its existing footprint in particular (i.e. where it mostly has cable rather than fiber assets) “has been challenging, driven by admittedly more persistent competition from fixed wireless and similar levels of wireline overbuild activity.” That included both FWA footprint expansion and aggressive marketing campaigns, he said.

New Street’s team led by Jonathan Chaplin noted, “The bad news for Cable: there is no reason to assume that market growth improves from here. The relief, when it eventually comes, will come from FWA adds receding.”

06/2023, Read More

Americans could save over $8.1 billion a year thanks to increased home broadband competition from 5G fixed wireless access, according to a new report by Econ One. The analysis finds that more mid-band licensed spectrum is key to making sure 5G FWA offerings can be scaled to maximize these economic benefits.

03/2023, Read More

Leichtman’s official figures for 2022 help clearly show how FWA stacked up against cable. The firm reported that the top cable companies in the US added about 515,000 subscribers during 2022, way down from the 2.8 million net adds they collectively recorded in 2021. The FWA offerings from T-Mobile and Verizon, on the other hand, gained a collective total of 3.17 million subscribers during 2022, way up from the 730,000 net customer additions they recorded during 2021. “Fixed wireless services accounted for 90% of the net broadband additions in 2022, compared to 20% of the net adds in 2021,” Bruce Leichtman, the firm’s president and principal analyst, said in a release.

However, some analysts have cautioned that cable operators may regain their momentum in 2023 as T-Mobile and Verizon slow their FWA gains. After all, wireless networks only have so much excess capacity, a situation that will make it difficult for T-Mobile and Verizon to continue to grow indefinitely.