After Competitive Summer, Broadband Prices Ticking Up: MoffettNathanson
Analysts from MoffettNathanson and TD Cowen were skeptical Meta’s Muse posed a threat to ISPs
WASHINGTON, Oct. 6, 2026 – After a fiercely competitive summer, home broadband prices are starting to tick up again, according to an analysis from MoffettNathanson.
“To be sure, the recent increases come in the context of a longer trend of falling broadband prices, so it is premature, in our view, to declare a durable reversal,” MoffettNathanson co-founder Craig Moffett wrote Tuesday. “There is always the chance that some of the more recent increases are simply ‘normalization’ after a furious end-of-quarter push to score net adds.”
Citing data from Navi, a company that tracks broadband local prices from 32 ISPs, Moffett said several national and regional providers had raised introductory prices in recent weeks, starting in late August.
AT&T, for example, hiked national rates twice in quick succession, most recently on Saturday, landing on $70 per month for 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) speeds. The first was followed closely by Comcast, which matched AT&T’s gig rate but offered a five-year price lock.
Optimum also backed off a super-cheap $25 gig plan, moving up to $50 but extending its price lock to five years from three.
In September, Comcast CFO Jason Armstrong said the cable giant anticipated more broadband losses in the third quarter than the same time last year. He attributed that to “irrational pricing” from fiber providers: about $30-40 for gig plans.
“To be clear, he wasn’t wrong. At a time when interest rates are rising and fiber densities are falling, earning a return on fiber deployment depends on achieving and sustaining high ARPU,” or average revenue per user, Moffett wrote.
Charter raised prices soon before its acquisition of Cox closed in late August, but hasn’t done so since, Moffett noted, potentially because it didn’t lower prices to match aggressive promotions from AT&T. The acquisition made Charter the largest cable ISP in the country.
Threat from Muse?
Telecom stocks took a hit last week after Meta released a new AI product called Muse. The company billed the tool as automating a myriad of daily tasks, including comparing and signing up for subscriptions.
The fear was that people would use Muse to get the cheapest possible broadband plans, or negotiate down current plans, driving prices and ARPUs lower.
Moffett was skeptical.
“Consumers generally know the providers in their home market – it’s a pretty simple list – and prices are already relatively easy to compare (the FCC’s broadband ‘nutrition labels’ demand it). Agents don’t make the comparison process meaningfully different from what it is today.”
The federally mandated broadband labels don’t show competitors’ pricing, but they’re standardized and aimed at making it easy for people to compare plans. In July, the FCC voted to scale back some of its label requirements.
He wrote that mobile broadband might be slightly more susceptible, since those plans are much more complicated and difficult to compare because of multi-line plans and phone subsidies.
In a Monday report, TD Cowen analysts said even wireless wasn't likely to see a major impact. Led by Gregory Williams, they wrote that wireless was already highly competitive, and people can get better deals by haggling at stores because of rigid call center scripts.
Providers could also simply take measures to block AI agents, and customers might not be comfortable handing their accounts over to AI tools in the first place, Williams wrote.
On the other hand, a TD Cowen survey found that about 40 percent of subscribers to mobile plans couldn’t say what plan they subscribed to, a figure Williams called “staggering” and potentially “ripe for Muse.”
“We expect this topic to be top of mind on upcoming earnings calls,” he wrote.
