Cable Broadband Growth Is Sputtering in the US, and No One's Sure Why (bloombergquint.com) 160
Something is slowing internet subscriber growth at Comcast and Charter, reports Bloomberg, "raising concerns about an end to what has been a huge growth business."
But why? Explanations ranging from a slowdown in consumer spending to competition from phone giants. Slashdot reader JoeyRox shared this report from Bloomberg: Charter on Friday reported 25% fewer new broadband subscribers than analysts estimated and said the overall number of new customers would fall back to 2018 levels. Comcast, which had earlier cut its subscriber forecast, reported 300,000 new internet customers Thursday, less than half the number added a year ago. Analysts were expecting some slowdown in demand coming off 2020, a year when broadband sign-ups spiked as the pandemic shifted people to working and schooling from home. Still, with Charter echoing Comcast's gloomy picture from Thursday, suddenly there's a chill on the cable broadband front, which became the most prized segment of the business as consumers cut traditional TV service.
Charter's shortfall raises "questions about whether this is the beginning of the end of the cable broadband story," said Geetha Ranganathan, an industry analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence...
Both Charter and Comcast blamed a slower new home market for some of the slack in demand, leaving the companies to try and squeeze more business out of their saturated markets. Other factors could include a dropoff in lower-paying customers as government assisted broadband funds dry up... New competition from phone companies certainly doesn't help. AT&T Inc. is expanding its network and added 289,000 new fiber internet customers last quarter. Meanwhile, T-Mobile US Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. are very excited about new wireless home broadband offers that aim directly at cable and outlying areas where cable could potentially expand.
Changes in TV viewing may also be a factor. For decades, cable companies sold TV and internet in discounted bundles. With rise of streaming video "the cable promos aren't as appealing for broadband only," Lopez said. Even as Comcast and Charter deploy new faster network technology to attract more lucrative customers, cable's share of the market is starting to shrink, according to Tammy Parker, a senior analyst with GlobalData.
But why? Explanations ranging from a slowdown in consumer spending to competition from phone giants. Slashdot reader JoeyRox shared this report from Bloomberg: Charter on Friday reported 25% fewer new broadband subscribers than analysts estimated and said the overall number of new customers would fall back to 2018 levels. Comcast, which had earlier cut its subscriber forecast, reported 300,000 new internet customers Thursday, less than half the number added a year ago. Analysts were expecting some slowdown in demand coming off 2020, a year when broadband sign-ups spiked as the pandemic shifted people to working and schooling from home. Still, with Charter echoing Comcast's gloomy picture from Thursday, suddenly there's a chill on the cable broadband front, which became the most prized segment of the business as consumers cut traditional TV service.
Charter's shortfall raises "questions about whether this is the beginning of the end of the cable broadband story," said Geetha Ranganathan, an industry analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence...
Both Charter and Comcast blamed a slower new home market for some of the slack in demand, leaving the companies to try and squeeze more business out of their saturated markets. Other factors could include a dropoff in lower-paying customers as government assisted broadband funds dry up... New competition from phone companies certainly doesn't help. AT&T Inc. is expanding its network and added 289,000 new fiber internet customers last quarter. Meanwhile, T-Mobile US Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. are very excited about new wireless home broadband offers that aim directly at cable and outlying areas where cable could potentially expand.
Changes in TV viewing may also be a factor. For decades, cable companies sold TV and internet in discounted bundles. With rise of streaming video "the cable promos aren't as appealing for broadband only," Lopez said. Even as Comcast and Charter deploy new faster network technology to attract more lucrative customers, cable's share of the market is starting to shrink, according to Tammy Parker, a senior analyst with GlobalData.
fuck (Score:5, Insightful)
comcast and charter really scratching their heads over this? really?
Re: (Score:2)
Someone should tell them home evictions will hurt their business.
Every time the cable Internet drops off... (Score:3, Insightful)
Every time the cable Internet drops out for hours or days on end, people are forced to use their cellphone's data connection.
Do that often enough, and people might start thinking, "Waitaminute... Why am I even paying $100+/mo for spotty cable Internet service when at the same time, my cell phone provides Internet service that seems to work whenever the cable is dead?"
Best last mile solution? (Score:2)
Because cable is a bad last mile solution in these days of smartphones. Ditto fiber. (But I also went through ADSL, ISDN, and modems down to 110 baud.)
As usual, I dream of better solution approaches. How about honestly competing wireless networks with the fibers connecting the base stations of the competing networks? Heck, I'm ready to dream big and imagine that most of the traffic could be handled on a peer-to-peer basis without needing to pay any tolls to the dominant corporate cancer of my serfdom.
Re: (Score:3)
Peer to peer is the geek answer to ignoring latency. That's why mesh didn't take off.
Re: (Score:2)
Ever heard of local caching or pre-fetching? How about power distributions and viral content?
I didn't think so.
Re: (Score:3)
Ever heard of local caching or pre-fetching? How about power distributions and viral content?
Most urban and suburban areas are already cabled. So mesh makes no sense there.
Rural areas are too sparsely populated for mesh. StarLink is the answer.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not the one who brought "mesh" into the discussion, but I definitely think there are better technical solutions if the money wasn't so dominant and tilted to the bigger is always better side (where the corporate cancers thrive). However I would even speculate that the deeper cause of the cable companies' woes is the loss of political clout.
As regards mesh networks, I think it could be a useful part of the solution in many situations. As regards the technical problems of cable in urban configurations, I
Re: (Score:2)
Except where I am, I use the cable connection where possible because it cuts out a lot less often than the cell network.
Also, cell connections still tend to have ludicrously small use caps with incredible fees for going even 1 byte over.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe the use caps are starting to break down? About 10 years back I had unlimited wireless data, though kind of slow. It was quite popular and the company was so successful that the company was acquired and the new owners cancelled that service.
But last year another company brought it back, but faster and cheaper, so I signed up. They seem to be doing quite well so far, but I'm not sure they'll survive. A bit flaky and a bit of throttling (most notable on last week's 12-GB upgrade from Apple) but I'm still
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not seeing much sign of that. The telecomms continue to push amazing speeds that can only happen under perfect conditions and would exhaust a month's data allocation in ever smaller fractions of the first minute of the month.
Meanwhile, I have to be careful not to step into any dead spots when talking on the cellphone (maximum 64Kbps) here in the middle of a populous suburb in a major metro area.
It's amazing to think that a century ago, we managed to wire the entire country for electricity and telephone
Re: (Score:2)
Well, said, but "5G" the carriers shout! Especially your bit about advertised transfer speeds that are meaningless when reliability and the data caps are considered. Your summary of the situation is quite accurate, even spot on, I do think that things are getting better and could be made much better if the political side of the system wasn't tilted and bribed in favor of the biggest corporate cancers--which used to include the cable companies, though these days I'm not so sure.
I'll throw in one amusing data
Re: (Score:2)
For rural sure, for urban areas cable is a pretty good last mile situation.
Re: (Score:2)
My own experiences with cable to the home in urban settings have been less satisfactory, but maybe I'm being too anecdotal?
Re: (Score:2)
300 I would have believed, but 110? Yeah, no.
Re: (Score:3)
Here's a picture: https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... [wikimedia.org] may not work, but it's quite similar to the one I remember. It's captioned as a Model 33. The right side panel of ours was replaced with the sockets for the handset of the phone. We used cheaper paper, a kind of rag bond? The things on the left side, if my memory serves, were the paper tape punch and reader. Around 1972 or thereabouts?
At the other end of the phone was an HP 2000 minicomputer of some kind. Model 2000E rings a distant bell? The school distri
Re:Best last mile solution? (Score:4, Interesting)
And you would probably have used that Teletype with a modem and an acoustic coupler: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_coupler/ [wikipedia.org]
Mid-70s in grade school I had a friend who had access to a major computer (CDC 7600 iirc) and we did some BASIC hacking and whatever else. I think we had a CRT terminal and Teletype printer to print stuff if we wanted to. It would connect at 110 or 300 BAUD, depending on maybe connection quality? I don't remember if I even knew why then.
Re: (Score:2)
I couldn't find a picture of that model so I tried to describe what it looked like. So long ago I can't even remember where the acoustic couplers maxed out. I'm sure they were used for 300 baud, too, but did 1200 baud or 2400 baud require the direct connection?
Re: (Score:3)
300 I would have believed, but 110? Yeah, no.
I owned a 110 baud modem when I had a TRS-80.
Re: (Score:2)
I owned a 110 baud modem when I had a TRS-80.
Can confirm. The modem on my TI-99/4A (same era) was 300 baud, but there were multiple BBS sites that I'd connect to at 110. You could watch the letters as they slowly streamed out on the text menus...
Re: (Score:2)
Cable is a worse distribution medium than fiber. Cable uses analog FDM on a shared medium, and separates upstream and downstream traffic with splitters and filters. Data is shared with broadcast and the bandwidth of the entire system is limited to ~5-600MHz. Inline amplifiers need to be maintained, coax cable plant degrades, and data competes with video for the limited bandwidth, which can only be allocated in channel-size chunks. Increasing the spectrum available for upstream traffic requires changing of f
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for the technical details, though at some point it becomes buzzword salad to me. Insofar as I understand, you do seem to be confirming my understanding of the technologies. (I'm basically shallow but broad.)
However my intention was to focus more on the application side of it, and I acknowledge that there are some applications where cable is okay. If your last mile were wireless, then you shouldn't need to worry about how the load is jiggled and balanced for any particular application. Almost all of t
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know man, I have the fastest speed package that AT&T offers in my area (100 down, 20 up) and T-Mobile's 5G Ultra Capacity network provides speeds upwards of 500 Mbps down and 40 Mbps up just right outside of where I live. Every time I look at the speed test results, I scratch my head wondering why my home wired Internet connection is slower than my wireless. I wish that T-Mobile would get their 5G deployed in my area so I can get home broadband from them.
He was talking about latency though, not speed.
Re: (Score:2)
EM waves travel faster in air than in cable. That is a basic scientific fact.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, but the switching in cellular networks seem a lot slower than in say fiber networks.
Like with my fiber connection I get normally sub millisecond ping times to our company servers over the internet and with the VPN tunnel overhead at a distance of about 20km.
But the Cell connection never has less than 10ms regardless of where the connection is from and where to.
Re:fuck (Score:5, Insightful)
For some strange reason, I went with a la carte DSL for 40/month. It's a complete mystery.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Cost has gone up about 30% since Charter took over Time-Warner. Service is worse (more times when service is down or slow). And even with a set contract, billing is all over the place month to month.
The only other option here is AT&T (fuck them with a syphilitic rusty sword). Looking at Earthlink (remember them?) as it will be good enough with hopefully more consistent.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
LOL, a termination fee, you suckers really let these companies pull the wool over your eyes badly.
cable vs dsl (Score:2)
What you describe is exactly why I went dsl 8 years ago. Cable internet-only was barely cheaper than the full deal.
Since then, the mandatory POTS connection charge has doubled. So I just took the Comcast deal of $20 first year, $30 seond year, $50 ongoing for 50/5Mbits We'll see what the deal is in 24 months.
Re: (Score:2)
Charges tend to be local, so I can't say with certainty, but I think that if phone your cable company and tell them you want the absolute minimum TV service plus Internet, you will find that you can save at least $100/month. This requires dropping ESPN, which many subscribers won't do.
Re: (Score:2)
It doesn't even have to be an economic problem
I mean, Comcast and Charter and other companies are amount the most hated companies around.
If you can avoid dealing with them, you do.
People realize they don't need to deal with the cable company, so big surprise, they don't.
Heck, if they wanted, they could survey why they're considered the worst companies in the US, and maybe try to fix it, their fortunes will reverse.
Because if you don't need the cable company, you'll ditch them.
Re: (Score:2)
They won't build (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't that the problem? People have been complaining for years about it "not being there" in the first place? Frontier has already pulled the "buying ancient technology" card, so what's left to sweep up?
5Mbps upload (Score:2)
its the upload bandwidth
not complicated more people are doing teams/zoom and you can tell the difference...
change the upload and then customers might value it
Re:They won't build (Score:5, Insightful)
How does that work? The Government has given them billions to build before, and it didn't happen then. What's different this time?
Hmm (Score:2)
Real head scratcher (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
If that was an impediment then people would have gone for all the other alternatives. They didn't.
Re: (Score:3)
Are there alternatives, really?
I have been hearing, time and again, people complaining that there's exactly one ISP where they live.
Seems that good ol' 'Murica has been carved and split amongst ISPs a long time ago.
Re: (Score:2)
Are there alternatives, really?
Hell yea there are alternatives, where I live I have my choice of Comcast or Xfinity.
Re:Real head scratcher (Score:5, Informative)
That's not "alternatives". That's two options. Seems that duopolies are pervasive in USA culture, be it politics, ISPs or other areas.
You have exactly two options, enough to avoid monopoly legal situations, but not enough to fuel a competitive market.
Here, in my 3rd world country, at the very edge of a large-ish city of 2M inhabitants, on a quiet side street, I have four ISP options. Five if I'm willing to also include a short range dish installation. They offer Fiber Internet ranging from 500 Mbit to Gigabit, for as little as 7 bucks a month. That's what competition means. And boy, they do compete. I receive offers from ISPs every other month.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, it's kind of hard to keep track, especially from where I live :)
Re: (Score:2)
Spectrum or AT&T. The choices are endless! One of those offers 300MB down, sometimes. The other offers 48Mbps down rarely (they advertise it with 1000 in the name, there's nothing 1000 about it). Both cost about the same.
So yeah, choices.
Re: (Score:2)
"noose or poison", seems like a good choice variety :)
Re: (Score:2)
More and more places are getting fiber these days.
Re: (Score:3)
Isn't that the subject of the article? That people seem to be going for other alternatives.
Comcast and Charter didn't have realistic competition, and now people can get 100 mbps over cellular, and now they are faced with a viable alternative (DSL couldn't keep up with DOCSIS, and while fiber can compete, it requires build out even as telco companies know full well that good enough home bandwidth is now over cellular). It's still worth it to milk the coax as they have some good headroom, but they have compe
Re: (Score:2)
DSL especially can't compete with DOCSIS if you don't bother to deploy it.
We The People paid the telcos to expand broadband and they pocketed the money, literally hundreds of billions of it.
No one knows why? Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
They will have to charge less and provide better service.
Re: (Score:2)
"Better service" and "charge less" doesn't work out. Just ask Walmart and their "low, low, prices". Seen any improvements in their customer service?
Re: (Score:2)
True enough, Walmart's entire model is based on low prices and zero service. When I am forced to go there, I am not looking for service, nor do I expect it.
Re: (Score:2)
"Better service" and "charge less" doesn't work out. Just ask Walmart and their "low, low, prices". Seen any improvements in their customer service?
Their on-line ordering and curbside pickup services is outstanding.
Thing is, Walmart is laser focused on cutting prices. They're not going to pay for any customer service they don't absolutely need.
Don't like it? Target and Costco are just down the street. That's fine, you do you.
Price ? (Score:2)
Comcast and Charter concentrate on F***king the customer as hard as they can and trying to get bare internet out of Comcast for less than $70 / month is a nightmare.
Re: (Score:2)
trying to get bare internet out of Comcast for less than $70 / month is a nightmare.
I mean, not really. It's fun to dump on Comcast and all but come on man...
https://i.imgur.com/vdnGGgw.pn... [imgur.com]
Re: Price ? (Score:2)
Paperless billing! F that. Why is it that they can't send a paper bill but can send a letter when you are 1 month late on payment. I'm not bitching for myself, I'm bitching for all the old people that prefer it vs an email bill.
Re: (Score:2)
Paperless billing! F that. Why is it that they can't send a paper bill but can send a letter when you are 1 month late on payment. I'm not bitching for myself, I'm bitching for all the old people that prefer it vs an email bill.
For that matter, why don't just they show up at your door and let you know your bill is ready?
Re: (Score:3)
trying to get bare internet out of Comcast for less than $70 / month is a nightmare.
I mean, not really. It's fun to dump on Comcast and all but come on man... https://i.imgur.com/vdnGGgw.pn... [imgur.com]
Both of those say "for the first 24 months". That's just an intro price.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's an opening offer
Institutional sociopathy (Score:2)
https://www.psychologytoday.co... [psychologytoday.com]
Psychopath/sociopath: "A mental condition in which a person consistently shows no regard for right and wrong and ignores the rights and feelings of others. People with antisocial personality disorder tend to antagonize, manipulate or treat others harshly or with callous indifference. They show no guilt or remorse for their behavior."
Could it be that customers are avoiding them because they're abusive and monopolistic? With a morally dubious system that encourages people to
Is this really a mystery? (Score:2)
I know several people (age early- to late-30s) who have dropped home Internet service and just use their cellular devices.
Internet for most people is just a media consumption pipeline anyway. With few people having desktops computer at home today, and many people not even having laptopns, only have tablets or phones, why get cable internet?
Re: (Score:2)
And you just explained the part of the article on the big spike in the early pandemic -- where those idiots found out they couldn't work at home using just their phone. Corporate or personal laptop and home Internet service.
Re:Is this really a mystery? (Score:5, Insightful)
And you just explained the part of the article on the big spike in the early pandemic -- where those idiots found out they couldn't work at home using just their phone. Corporate or personal laptop and home Internet service.
Why are they idiots for not owning devices they never needed before?
And even boomers. (Score:2)
Not just Millennials. Gen Xers too. I haven't had cablenet since 2018. Just use my included 100GB Sprint hotspot instead.
Even boomers, and those early to the industry. I still have a DSL I installed when I moved into my current house about 1968, and my vacation home built about 2001 started with only dialup available, until AT&T finally upgraded the cellphone tower covering it to have data, after which I used cellphone access there.
But though AT&T DSL has been flaking out for years, and is now bein
If you have bandwidth caps (Score:2)
It's not much of a stretch to use your phone/hotspot instead.
Another thing charter and comcast don't appear to be doing is fiber.
There are at least 2 companies locally stringing fiber as fast as they can.
500mb/s symmetrical for like $40-$50 a month, up to 1gb/s for like $100 a month.
There are some downsides to one of the companies, due to their natting, there isn't any way to host services on home connections. They do have business accounts that will work, which cost more...
New or existing? (Score:5, Insightful)
25% fewer new subscribers, not 25% fewer subscribers.
What do they expect? People to sign up for multiple subscriptions?
Who do they think they are? Wells Fargo?
I also cannot fathom that the measure of corporate success is not just growth,
but record growth. A 25% drop must be quite traumatic for them.
Re: (Score:3)
Exactly. Pretty much anyone who wants broadband (and it's available in their area) already has it.
Where is this growth in the USA going to come from? Add that to the fact that most phone plans now have
unlimited data on their phones and even their hotspots are unlimited in the sense that that only slows it down not cut it off completely.
I know many people who their only internet is their phone and their office computer at work.
Their kids watch Netflix on their phones in their rooms so they don't even need
Re:New or existing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. Pretty much anyone who wants broadband (and it's available in their area) already has it.
Where is this growth in the USA going to come from?
Simple, these are new customers so just offer a deep discounted introductory deal, then screw them so hard afterward they will beg for someone else, even *shudders* dsl. That way you can churn your way to an unlimited number of NEW subscribers!
Re: (Score:2)
They probably expect to grow new customers at a rate related to the number of new household formations. For example, the number of new households between 2010 and 2020 was 10 million [pewresearch.org].
Maybe there is enough interwebs everywhere. (Score:3)
I am mostly happy when my phone works as intended e.g. through wifi or through 4g
There is lots of wifi all around the world now, that has improved a lot as well.
Most things I do at home require just a couple of mbits.
Yeah, okay, a streaming service may require 10 to 15 mbits for a stream, but that's as far as "tv" goes for me, I don't actually watch something that is actual "tv", as in a programming with news, series or sports. Tv has become a e.g. netflix stream for me.
It is fine, why would I need to spend more?
Cable = Old Phone Company (Score:4, Insightful)
Ummm you have to provide good customer value and not just charge people because you think you have a monopoly.
Either build out your network to compete, offer a service superior to 5G, bring Fiber to my house, or shut up and slowly die.
Re: (Score:2)
...bring Fiber to my house, or shut up and slowly die.
I've experienced this. My local utility company is burying fiber through the city, including residential neighborhoods, and licensing private companies to provide service (Quantum Fiber/CenturyLink is the only company to sign up so far). When I called to ask when they were planning to install it in my neighborhood, I was told it was about a year away. I was sad. But then, about a month or two after my call, the trucks were in my neighborhood burying the fiber trunk lines. When I asked the guys burying the
I know why (Score:3)
Free to air tv often has better content than Netflix. and other streaming companies.
But tv also has current, community based content.
Just got FTTH, Comcast can eat it. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yup, technically there are three choices where I live - DSL, cable (DOCSIS), or fiber. Fiber is 60% of the cost, 5x the bandwidth of cable and DSL is a joke. .This is from a startup (5 years old) ISP. I previously had lived in areas with Comcast service. routers would have strange problems, and every night they'd load new firmware and reboot, They do some internal testing, but not very much, and then test on the customers. Now with the firmware in the newest generations of routers getting larger and larger,
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Something == sucky product (Score:2)
During the pandemic, Internet would slow to a crawl 12-5 on every weekday. Comcast massively under-provisioned upload bandwidth and couldn't cope with shift from Netflix watching to Zoom calls. Thankfully Sonic came to our area a few month ago, no problems since. Totally understandable that people will go for any available alternative including 5g or even LTE with good signal.
Re: (Score:2)
too much bufferbloat on the wifi (Score:2)
Sure wish the ISPs were making a serious investment into better wifi [lwn.net].
Re: (Score:2)
By adding more non-aqm'd bandwidth to the downlink, they added to bufferbloat on wifi ...
Random Early Drop and overprovisioning are your friends.
TV as we knew it has been long gone (Score:2, Insightful)
You might even call it dead.
People have discovered freedom, and once you taste freedom you don't go back.
I remember the time of endless onslaught of ads, endless mind-numbing ads for stuff I'd never ever even consider purchasing, meant for an entirely different audience, def. not me.
It's been over 15 years since I had Cable television. I stopped watching Terrestrial television years ago, around 8 years ago I think.
I use Netflix, Amazon Prime + local channels on apps and directly on the internet now, and we
Re: (Score:2)
You might even call it dead.
This is about broadband.
Fiber is why (Score:2)
Small operators are deploying it for cheap while Comcast waters its RF plant.
Just wait until Starlink becomes widely available (Score:2)
Re: Just wait until Starlink becomes widely availa (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
GEE I WONDER WHY? (Score:2)
*looks at the dumpster fire telecoms industry in the US*
the real reason... (Score:2)
shitty customer service and random fees added on the bills
It is almost like they are a monopoly... (Score:2)
it is also curious how they manage to have faster speeds and better prices when someone like Google Fiber shows up in a neighborhood but never before that competition shows up. It is almost like they could have offered it the whole time but just didn't have the incentive to, but I am sure that could not be the case otherwise they would be a monopoly suppressing innovation and progress.
2 things (Score:2)
2) starlink. We currently pay $170 to Comcast just for 250 M internet, along with a voip. We are moving north of Seattle. If they do not have utility fiber, then we will buy Skylink.
Data point, opinion, and suggestion (Score:2)
From the archives:
Comcast Awarded the Golden Poo Award [2010] [slashdot.org]
This repeats their 2007 win and claiming the title again in 2014.
I couldn't imagine why people might avoid them. It's almost as if people remember when they have earned multiple awards for having the worst customer service. It takes special effort like making it obscenely difficult to cancel service as part of a customer retention strategy [gizmodo.com] and (personal anecdote from THIS YEAR
Hmmm (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: the elephant in the room (Score:2)