Cable CEOs: Broadband Market Still Tough, But Optimistic About Convergence

Dec. 8, 2025 – Top executives at the two largest cable ISPs in the country said Monday they continued to see competition from fiber and fixed wireless broadband providers. They also said they feel optimistic about the industry’s trend toward convergence given their expansive wireline footprints.

Analysts don’t expect the cable industry to return to subscriber growth in the next few years, and potentially not even this decade. The Affordable Connectivity Program's shut down last year, plus slow household formation and move rates, have made the sector even vulnarable to new compeition from other ISPs.

“It continues to be intensely competitive,” Comcast President Mike Cavanagh said. “Our expectation is that it’s going to remain that way for a while.”

Starting in January, Cavanagh will be co-CEO of Comcast alongside Brian Roberts, the company’s current chairman and CEO. Cavanagh and Charter CEO Chris Winfrey spoke in separate sessions at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference in New York.

Cavanagh said in the fourth quarter there had so far been “more aggressive” promotions from fiber broadband providers in the company’s footprint and said fixed wireless was “steady.”

Charter’s Winfrey largely agreed.

“Look, it continues to be highly competitive in the marketplace,” he said.

He said it was normal to see promotions around the holidays, and that the pace of new fiber deployments had remained consistent. 

“There’s not a big acceleration that’s taking place there, but it continues to be competitive across the board,” he said.

He acknowledged, like Cavanagh, that fixed wireless offerings from the mobile carriers had expanded for longer than the cable industry had initially expected. They both maintained that the carriers only had so much capacity to keep adding fixed broadband subscribers to their mobile network and would eventually slow the pace of new additions.

Winfrey noted that without AT&T, which was slower to push fixed wireless than Verizon and T-Mobile, the sector would have added slightly fewer subscribers year-over-year in the last quarter. 

New Street analysts estimate the carriers have the spectrum capacity to handle about 32.4 million fixed wireless subscribers, compared to the 14.9 million they currently have. They also identified a slowdown in fixed wireless growth as a prerequisite for cable returning to subscriber growth.

Convergence

Winfrey and Cavanagh each said they felt good about the increasing industry push toward convergence – selling bundled fixed and mobile broadband – an effort to reduce subscriber churn.

“If I wanted to be an optimist, I’d say somebody’s actually doing the marketing for us and telling customers the benefit of convergence, when the reality is in 80 percent of their footprint they can’t and probably won’t be able to provide that level of service,” Winfrey said. “All else equal, I’d probably rather it didn’t take place, but if someone’s going to market for us and we can do it in 100 percent of our footprint, we’ll take it.”

That’s a point that MoffettNathanson founder Craig Moffett has made in investor notes: The cable giants stand to do well amid the carriers' push for convergence since they’re the ones with sprawling wireline footprints. Comcast counts about 64 millions passings and Charter counts about nearly 58 million, in addition to the 12 million it’s set to acquire from Cox.

Those dwarf AT&T’s current 30 million fiber passings, the largest fiber network, and surpasses even the long-term plans of Verizon and T-Mobile, which are aiming for up to 40 million and 15 million respectively. AT&T is looking to reach at least 60 million locations by the end of 2030.

Cavanagh said about 14 percent of Comcast’s broadband subscriber base also took a mobile line. The figure is 21 percent at Charter.

The cable giants now count more than 20 million mobile lines between them.

He said Comcast did indeed see reduced churn among converged customers and would continue efforts to get more people to try the service in 2026. Earlier this year, Comcast began offering a free mobile line to new and existing broadband customers who subscribe to at least 300 megabits per second – that promotion ends Dec. 16 according to the company’s website.

“There’s a little bit of an awareness issue,” Cavanagh said, and an issue with generating interest in the more premium plans.

Keeping customers around

Bundling fixed broadband and wireless lines in attractively priced plans is part of the cable industry’s effort to win back the affection of customers frustrated by years of promotional prices rolling off into higher rates.

Cavanagh said by the end of 2026 the goal was to have “the large majority” of its 31 million broadband subscribers on new pricing plans it announced this summer, which come with price locks. Charter introduced new plans with price locks last year. 

Winfrey said that, in addition to the wireless service both cable giants are eager to push, Charter’s video business could also be helpful for reducing broadband churn.

Video subscribers have been leaving in droves, but the trend has become less severe in 2025. The company offers free access to streaming apps on certain plans, which Winfrey said was helping to reduce churn – once customers became convinced it wasn’t a short-term gimmick.

“Because nearly all of our video customers are also internet customers, it means that it’s helpful to internet as well,” he said.

Winfrey said the company was also making an effort to improve its customer service and respond quicker to subscriber outages and issues. 

Verizon relationship

Both Cavanagh and Winfrey were asked about their company’s relationship with Verizon. Deals with the carrier allow both Comcast and Charter to offer their mobile services on the Verizon infrastructure, and analysts think it’s up for renegotiation in early 2026.

“It’s a good relationship. I’ve connected with the new top of the house and I think we are both interested in making things work well for both of us,” Cavanagh said.

Verizon CEO Dan Schulman took over from Hans Vestberg abruptly in October. 

“The Verizon contract and the relationship is rock solid,” Winfrey said. “They’ve been a great partner, they’ve got a great network, it’s been highly successful for us. I know it’s very important to them as well.”

This summer, both cable companies signed a separate deal with T-Mobile allowing them to offer wireless service to medium-sized businesses (up to 1,000 lines). The deal takes effect in 2026, and Winfrey said Charter’s new service enabled by the deal would launch in the middle of the year.