Charter, Comcast Focused on Customer Service, Savings to Win Customers Back
Optimum also introduced low-priced plans at $25 per month for five years.
WASHINGTON, March 4, 2026 – The cable giants are still focused on repairing customer perception in their effort to stave off broadband subscriber losses.
From Charter CEO Chris Winfrey’s perspective, the company’s network upgrades, revamped customer service, and relatively cheap mobile lines should already have the company competing more strongly against fiber and fixed wireless ISPs.
“Our biggest challenge has really been messaging around that, and it comes about from the cable industry not having the best service reputation,” he said. “So for the entire industry, I think our focus is finding new ways to communicate that and deliver on that service proposition.”
Comcast co-CEO Mike Cavanagh agreed. Both companies have introduced price locks and are bundling broadband plans with mobile and video in a bid to win over customers after several quarterscab;l of losses.
“Revamping a much simpler go-to-market, more all-inclusive [pricing] is all part of addressing that,” Cavanagh said. “That’s a big move on that score.”
Cavanagh spoke at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco Tuesday, and Winfrey spoke there Wednesday.
Charter has even started guaranteeing customers it will save them $1,000 per year versus the major wireless carriers if they take broadband and two mobile lines, an assertion Winfrey said has already been in investor materials and on company webpages for months.
“If we’re doing this nearly 100 percent of the time and we stand behind it, why wouldn't we guarantee it?” he said. “The opportunity there, I hope, is the opportunity to break through on messaging the value and utility that I was talking about before.”
Optimum, formerly Altice USA, also introduced a low priced $25 plan that’s guaranteed for five years on Tuesday.
Charter-Cox merger, mobile and video
Winfrey said Charter’s $34.5 billion acquisition of Cox would be a good chance to sell bundled plans to customers in Cox’s 12.3 million-location footprint. Just 13 percent of those households take video from Cox, and there’s “much lower” penetration in mobile, Winfrey said.
“I think we’ll end up growing video for a period of time just because of where the starting point is,” he said.
Video subscribers have been declining, but Charter added customers on the service in the fourth quarter of 2025, something it hadn’t done since 2020.
The new packages and streaming service bundles that have fueled that turnaround were motivated by a desire to entice new broadband customers and keep existing ones around.
“Our reason for being in the video business first and foremost is to support broadband,” he said. “The margins aren’t as good as they used to be in video, but if we can add value to the broadband relationship, it’s worth it.”
Cavanagh said the same idea was behind Comcast’s push into mobile service, which it began a bit later than Charter. The company added 1.5 million lines in 2025, partly the result of a one-year free line promotion that will roll into paid customers this year.
Network upgrades
Winfrey said by the end of 2026 Charter would have 50 percent of its footprint upgraded to multi-gigabit speeds. That was currently online in 15 percent of the footprint, he said.
Cavanagh added Comcast had upgraded about 60 percent of its footprint to mid-split technology, an intermediate step toward the full multi-gig upgrade. He said “a subset” had received that upgrade but didn’t specify.
Booth executives said their companies would start highlighting their network upgrades once more of their footprints were fully completed.
Charter’s 1.7 million-locations rural expansion, fueled by federal and state grants, is set to be “largely complete” at the end of the year, Winfrey added.
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