Mike Farrell

Lawyers for Cox Communications will begin oral arguments on March 9 in the appeal of a $1 billion copyright infringement award that it says is not only wrong on a legal basis, but could upend the entire broadband industry if it is allowed to stay.

Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts said that despite slowdowns in broadband growth, he sees little threat to the business from new competitors like fixed wireless, adding that rural expansion, offering a competitive product and bundling with mobile should help subscriber additions continue to rise. Roberts said he sees four areas where the company can boost broadband growth: expanding its footprint, competing more aggressively, bundling with other products like wireless and growing its business services reach.

As executive VP of digital platforms at Charter Communications, Jodi Robinson is the go-to digital chieftain at the cable company, leading its video product management, customer self-service platforms, internal design agency and its data platforms organization. A graduate of Stanford University, Robinson joined Charter in 2014 as senior Vice President. She has led its digital platforms organization since 2019 and its user experience design and development organization since joining the company.

The slowdown in cable broadband subscriber additions may be even slower than anticipated after executives at two of the top three publicly traded cable companies -- Comcast and Altice USA -- hinted that customer growth is trending at an even more decelerated pace than expected. Comcast Cable CEO Dave Watson said he expected to end 2021 with 1.3 million additional broadband subscribers.

Just weeks after Charter Communications slashed prices for its Spectrum Mobile offering to $29.99 per month, chairman and CEO Tom Rutledge said charges for wireless cable offerings could drop further as the cost to provide service continues to decline. “I think the mobile opportunity is very similar to the wireline opportunity that existed 15 years ago,” Rutledge said. “[Mobile]'s got its own complexities, but the opportunity is there to create value for consumers. Consumers actually save money and we make money. That’s a pretty attractive business model that is available to us.

Cable One has purchased Cable America Missouri, a small broadband and cable operator with about 14,000 customers in rural areas in the central part of the state, for about $113 million in cash. Cable One CEO Julie Laulis said the Cable America properties are close to markets the company purchased in 2019 with its buy of Fidelity Communications. “Due to its adjacency to our Fidelity markets as well as alignment with culture, growth and competitive profile, we expect Cable America to be an excellent fit to our growing family of brands,” Laulis said.

Charter Communications’ dismal Q3 broadband subscriber performance — it missed analysts’ consensus growth estimates by nearly 30 percent — may seem like the harbinger of bad things to come, but influential analyst Craig Moffett believes that the real culprit in the slowdown may be sluggish household formation. Moffett said that while the quick reaction is that the growth phase has ended for cable’s most important product, he believes it is tied to declining new household formation.

Evercore ISI media analyst Vijay Jayant predicts that while Q3 broadband subscriber increases will be lower than they have been in the past few quarters, it won’t be that dramatic of a decline. This comes just as cable operators are preparing to release their Q3 results. Comcast is expected first out of the gate, with its Q3 earnings report due on October 28, followed by Charter (Oct 29), Altice USA (Nov 4) and Cable One (Nov 4).

While cable operators grapple with the slowdown of broadband subscriber additions expected in the third quarter and beyond, Bernstein media analyst Peter Supino said that telephone companies, long the butt of jokes about the sluggish speeds and poor service inherent in their core digital subscriber line (DSL) service, have streamlined operations and are positioning themselves to take back significant market share. Supino pointed to AT&T’s spinoff of DirecTV, 

Fueled by the slowdown of broadband subscriber additions, Wells Fargo media analyst Steven Cahall estimates that as penetration rates rise and DSL competition sputters, the cable sector could be entering a period of diminished profitability. Most cable operators have warned that subscriber additions would be lower as pandemic lockdowns disappeared and workers returned to their offices. But adding to the pressure is increased penetration of homes with annual household incomes above $25,000 — now at about 100 percent — and the continued slide of digital subscriber line (DSL) service.