Cable One Loses 4,200 Subs, Liberty’s GCI Down 700
Alaska-based GCI is set to be spun off this summer as Charter proceeds with its Liberty acquisition.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 28, 2025 – Cable One lost 4,200 broadband subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2024, the company announced Thursday. The cable operator ended the year with 1,055,200 residential and business broadband customers.
MoffettNathanson’s Craig Moffett noted the company’s broadband losses haven’t been as bad as Comcast and Charter, but he lamented Cable One’s lack of a mobile offering. The cable giants offer wireless service through deals with Verizon, which appears to help with customer retention and revenue per user.
“A Cable One’s competitors increasingly lean into convergence themselves, Cable One’s lack of a wireless offering is leaving them at a growing disadvantage,” Moffett wrote. “Granted, that’s only in some of their footprint. But why not make convergence an advantage instead of a deficiency?”
The major 5G carriers are also leaning into converged fixed and mobile offerings, speeding up efforts to expand their wireline footprints.
Liberty
Liberty Broadband shareholders approved on Wednesday their company’s acquisition by Charter. The deal, inked in November, is still expected to close on June 20, 2027.
Liberty, which is owned by cable billionaire John Malone, itself owns nearly 26 percent of Charter. Charter is buying back $100 million of those shares each month until the deal closes, an effort allowing Liberty to pay down debt before being rolled up. That process began in November, according to Liberty, with Charter spending $205 million through the end of January.
GCI, the Alaska cable operator that makes up Liberty’s main broadband operation, is being spun off into a separate company as part of the transaction. The spin off is planned for Summer 2025.
GCI “has been a good asset that has been well run, but the asset and the competitive dynamics in the market have always been different from the ‘lower 48’,” New Street Research analyst Jonathan Chaplin wrote in a note when the deal was announced. “Charter would love to acquire Cable assets where they can capture value by extracting synergies and / or by improving the underlying operations. GCI doesn’t fit this mold.”
For consumer broadband numbers, the company reported 700 lost broadband subscribers in the fourth quarter, for a total of 155,700. That’s compared to a loss of 2,400 last quarter. Its wireless service shed 1,500 subscribers, ending the year with 198,800 lines. GCI is preparing to shut down its video service by mid-2025.
