Competition/Antitrust

T-Mobile's third-quarter profits slipped as higher costs and a lull in new customer additions following a headline-grabbing hack sapped its bottom line. The company said it added 673,000 phone subscribers in the closely watched market for postpaid wireless service during Q3 2021. The tally lagged behind AT&T, which reported a net gain of 928,000 such subscribers over the same span.

Analyst firm GlobalData tipped cable to lose ground to fiber over the coming years as competition among broadband providers peddling multi-gigabit services intensifies. Tammy Parker, principal analyst at GlobalData, said the multi-gigabit marketplace is already heating up despite the fact that very few households actually require such speeds.

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.

Consolidated Communications is on pace to exceed its 2021 goal for gigabit-capable fiber upgrades after the independent telco reported that it had achieved 97,000 upgrades in the third quarter. The figure, reported as part of the company’s third quarter earnings, comes after Consolidated reported 76,000 fiber upgrades in the second quarter this year and 46,000 in the first quarter as it embarked on a goal to reach almost 2 million fiber upgrades by 2025.

Charter Communications scaled back its forecast for broadband net addition growth in the full year 2021 after posting a significant slowdown in subscriber gains in Q3. The company gained 265,000 internet customers across the two segments in Q3 2021, raising its year-to-date total to 1.02 million. The Q3 figure marked a significant year-on-year drop from 537,000 in Q3 2020 and sequential slide from 400,000 net adds in Q2.

Comcast raked in 300,000 broadband net additions in Q3 2021, a figure that was less than half the number it added in 2020 and lower than the pre-pandemic gain it posted in the comparable period of 2019. The operator added 633,000 subscribers during the pandemic in Q3 2020 and 379,000 broadband customers in Q3 2019. Comcast CFO Michael Cavanagh previously warned that the operator expected net additions to slow in Q3.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) just announced plans to unleash more than $1 billion in fresh funding for rural broadband via its Broadband ReConnect Program, but not everyone is rejoicing. Claude Aiken, CEO of the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA), warned new rules adopted for the latest funding round could effectively cut fixed wireless access providers out of the running.

The Federal Trade Commission announced that it is restoring its long-established practice of routinely restricting future acquisitions for merging parties that pursue anti-competitive mergers.

In a Federal Communications Commission proceeding aimed at bringing more competition to consumers living and working in multiple tenant environments (MTEs), like apartments and condominiums, INCOMPAS calls for immediate action that bans anti-competitive industry practices such as Graduated Revenue Share Agreements, Exclusive Wiring Arrangements (including sale-and-leaseback deals) and Exclusive Marketing Agreements that keep residents in the dark to more affordable alternatives. INCOMPAS has long been the leader on the MTE issue, advocating for ending monopoly practices that have harmed sma