Where Are Comcast and Charter's Internet Customers Going? Here.

Comcast lost 65,000 high-speed internet subscribers last quarter, while Charter shed 117,000 residential broadband customers, extending a trend that has now reduced each company’s internet base by more than 1 million subscribers since 2023 peaks. The article argues that fixed wireless access from T-Mobile and Verizon is emerging as a meaningful competitive threat, with the two wireless carriers now serving 15.5 million FWA customers. The pressure is weighing on broadband economics and contributed to weaker EBITDA at Comcast and Charter last quarter.

Analysis

The market is likely underestimating how structurally damaging fixed wireless access is to the cable broadband duopoly because the threat is not just price competition, it is a different capex model. FWA scales off already-deployed spectrum and tower assets, so the marginal cost to acquire a household is materially lower than trenching, permitting, and in-home install economics for cable. That means the competitive response from CMCSA and CHTR is likely to be defensive discounting rather than value-accretive reinvestment, which pressures both revenue per user and margin simultaneously.

The second-order effect is that the pain should compound over multiple reporting cycles rather than resolve in one quarter. Broadband churn has a habit of starting with price-sensitive and lower-usage customers, but once adoption normalizes, the remaining base becomes increasingly vulnerable as wireless carriers improve speeds, latency, and home-router performance. If the current trajectory persists for another 12-18 months, the bigger issue is not subscriber count alone but the loss of broadband as the stable cash-flow anchor that historically subsidized video decline.

For TMUS and VZ, this is a favorable funnel into higher-value household relationships, but the opportunity is asymmetric only if they avoid over-acquiring low-margin users. FWA is strategically attractive because it deepens bundle stickiness and raises switching costs, yet if carriers chase share too aggressively, they risk saturating capacity in dense markets and triggering localized network congestion that can impair brand perception. The key variable is whether incremental FWA additions remain on networks with headroom; that determines whether this becomes a clean share gain or a margin dilution story.

Consensus may be too focused on cable as a melting-ice-cube trade and not enough on how long the transition can last. The installed base for broadband is large enough that even modest annual share loss can drain earnings for years, but the counterpoint is that cable stocks may already reflect a lot of this structural decay. The more interesting mismatch is that TMUS and VZ are being valued mostly as telecoms, while the market may still be underpricing the durability of FWA as a third residential access layer.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Maintain short CMCSA and CHTR on rallies over the next 1-3 months; use any broadband rebound to add, because the bear case is a multi-quarter earnings grind rather than a one-off miss.
• Go long TMUS vs. CHTR in a pair trade for 3-6 months: TMUS has the cleaner growth narrative and more operating leverage to FWA adoption, while CHTR faces direct erosion of its core cash engine.
• Go long VZ vs. CMCSA for 6-12 months as a defensive relative-value trade; VZ should benefit from FWA monetization even if broader telecom growth remains muted, while CMCSA carries more earnings downside from subscriber loss.
• For options, consider buying 3-6 month CMCSA puts or put spreads into the next earnings cycle; the best payoff comes if management is forced to lower broadband guidance again and the market re-rates the durability of cash flow.
• Avoid chasing TMUS and VZ outright after strong runs; prefer pullbacks or pair structures, because the upside depends on FWA capacity discipline and not just subscriber growth.