Are Cable Companies “Permanently Impaired”?

KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst Brandon Nispel recently said that “There are reasons to believe that cable is permanently impaired.” By that, he believes that cable companies are going to continue to lose broadband customers as they compete with fiber and fixed wireless access. The problem that cable companies are experiencing stems largely from the time when they enjoyed a near-monopoly status in broadband markets across the country, when their only real competition was DSL provided over copper wires. The reason for the cable company decline today is that the monopoly is now over and cable companies suddenly have to compete with alternatives like fiber and FWA cellular. Using the term ‘permanently impaired’ makes it sound like cable companies have inferior broadband, but I don’t think that most of the households leaving cable companies are doing so. The cable companies are seeing customers leave because of the way they treated customers over the last decade.