New Street Research: End of ACP a continued drag on cable, broadband market

A new analysis of the broadband and cable market for Q3 shows continued pain for cable providers as subscriber losses grow, and as broadband industry net adds stay below pre-pandemic levels. The causes of the continued slowdown range from the loss of the Affordable Connectivity Program to a rise in mobile-only households and slow move rates. In a report for New Street Research, David Barden assessed the landscape for Q3, based on the nine biggest cable and telecommunications providers occupying 85 percent of the market: Altice USA, AT&T, Cable One, Charter Communications, Comcast, Frontier Communications, Lumen, T-Mobile, and Verizon. "The cable industry continues to lose subscribers at an elevated pace with Comcast doing worse than Charter thanks to the 1-2 punch of fiber and FWA [fixed wireless access]," wrote Barden. "For cable subscriber growth to improve, in our view, industry-level net add growth needs to recover to pre-pandemic levels or better." Barden identified ways for cable subscriber growth to improve, but isn't optimistic. "Cable subscriber growth can also improve if household switching velocity accelerates from current levels or FWA subscriber growth slows down," wrote Barden. However, he added, "We see neither in the near future."