How Charter and Comcast are building their way out of Verizon dependency

Cable operators are transforming the wireless industry, not through clever marketing or promotional pricing, but through network jiu-jitsu that turns their existing cable plant into a weapon against the carriers who once held all the leverage. Charter Communications and Comcast have deployed $922 million in Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) spectrum and are now converting it into strand-mounted small cells, fundamentally changing the economics of their wireless businesses. The logic is simple enough that executives from both companies have publicly stated it. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts says that 3 percent of Comcast's geography generates 60 percent of its mobile macro network traffic. The overwhelming majority of cellular usage happens in a tiny fraction of the geographic footprint. Traditional carriers must build networks that cover nearly 100 percent of the geography where people live to capture that traffic. Cable operators can target just the 3 percent where traffic actually occurs, leverage their existing cable infrastructure, and let Verizon handle the unprofitable long tail.