- Charter plans to launch wireless internet backup for residential broadband, said CEO Chris Winfrey at UBS
- It’s an interesting move given how Charter has downplayed fixed wireless competition
- Winfrey also said the industry should consider “how to cooperate” with satellite
Charter Communications CEO Chris Winfrey unveiled the company plans to launch a wireless internet backup for residential broadband customers, as fixed wireless access (FWA) and fiber continue to chip away at cable subs.
Speaking at the UBS conference last week, Winfrey said the service will be similar to what Charter already offers for business customers, which is a redundant wireless connection with no overage charge in the event of a network disruption.
On the business side, “we’ve actually seen an improvement” in growth amid FWA competition, though he noted Charter doesn’t count wireless backup customers as separate subscribers.
At the same time, “it’s difficult to see how much of the fixed wireless access lines or cell phone internet lines into business are really just a secondary line or a backup line. Because the reality is, we sell that service too,” Winfrey said, adding that the business backup option is “highly successful.”
Charter expanding its wireless backup biz is interesting given how the company has downplayed the long-term impact of FWA and its capacity. Winfrey said he still thinks FWA will be capacity-constrained down the road, “but it’s also true that it’s going on longer than we thought.”
According to Recon Analytics Principal Roger Entner, Charter’s move is an “implicit admission that wireless is reliable enough to be backup,” which seems to contradict its argument that FWA isn’t a good enough service.
“It is a more expensive router and the traffic costs Charter money. You only do these things when you absolutely have to,” he explained.
Per New Street Research’s analysis, cable companies have been losing share among terrestrial providers for the past 16 quarters, specifically in about 55% of the market where they compete against fiber. That percentage is higher when AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon’s FWA gains are in the mix – and they still have plenty of legroom to grow.
Thoughts on LEO competition
Winfrey at the conference also brought up the potential of partnering with low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite operators, not just for direct-to-device service but also as another backup option.
“It’s a great product for a low density or mobile environment. And I think there are ways that we should really be thinking about how to cooperate, whether it’s Amazon or Starlink, whether it’s D2D or whether it’s backup services or B2B applications,” he said. “I think they’re complementary.”
AT&T CEO John Stankey similarly said last week that he views LEO as “largely a complement” and he’s not too worried about competition from satellite, at least not immediately.
On the rural broadband front, both SpaceX and Amazon have won more Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) locations than any wired operator, though a few major operators have won a sizable chunk of locations. Comcast for instance is set to cover about 254,000 locations, per NSR’s latest tally, while AT&T won nearly 204,000.
In Charter’s case, it plans to deploy BEAD-funded networks to just over 81,000 locations. But the company from the get-go said it doesn’t intend to be heavily involved with BEAD since it’s already doing rural deployments via the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF).
“We really built most of the stuff that was around us already,” Winfrey said. “What we intended to do had already been done through RDOF, state grants, ARPA.”