Broadband customer growth for the biggest U.S. cable companies has suddenly stopped, while T-Mobile and Verizon just added nearly 1 million to the ranks of fixed wireless access (FWA) subscribers, who are paying in many cases nearly 40% less each month for home internet.
That won't stop Charter Communications from jacking up the monthly broadband bill for its internet-only customers by $5 a month.
The nation's No. 2 cable operator referenced a price hike during its third-quarter earnings call back on Oct. 28. And it confirmed last week that affected Spectrum Internet customers would start seeing the price increase on their monthly bills starting Nov. 1. Analysts estimate that nearly a third of Charter's 30.3 million high-speed-internet customers will be impacted.
Next TV wasn't notified at our Los Angeles nerve center by Charter, but we did notice that our 300 Mbps service spiked in price this week from $74.99 a month to $79.99. The 500 Mbps service will now cost $99.99 a month, and Charter's 1-gig tier will increase to $119.99.
Charter's last major price increase came at the end of 2020. The cable company is simultaneously introducing a new bundled tier, Spectrum One, which packages 300 Mbps internet service with Charter's Advanced Wi-Fi product, as well as Spectrum Mobile service, at a 12-month promotional rate of $49.99 a month. The price will increase to around $85 a month after that one-year promo period.
Will that promotion soften the blowback for Charter?
Again, our wireless carrier, T-Mobile, is offering its 5G Home Internet FWA service for $50 a month. The cable industry is aggressively messaging about its network performance superiority, but a 40% savings has to be seriously pondered.
Charter added 61,000 high-speed internet customers in the third quarter after reporting a subscriber loss of 21,000 in Q2. The cable operator added 537,000 and 265,000 customers in the third quarters of 2020 and 2021, respectively, so you get an idea of home much customer growth for its core connectivity service is slowing.
Charter's share price is down over 43% since the beginning of 2022, as well.
Charter is, however, at the beginning of a major investment cycle in its next network upgrade, with plans to transition to DOCSIS 4.0 and Distributed Access Architecture virtualization. ■
