Leichtman Research Group recently released broadband customer statistics for the end of the first quarter of 2023 for the largest cable and telephone companies. Leichtman compiles most of these numbers from the statistics provided to stockholders other than for Cox and Mediacom, which are estimated. Leichtman says this group of companies represents 96% of all US landline broadband customers.
The first quarter of the year shows a continuation of the trend where all of the growth in broadband is coming from T-Mobile and Verizon FWA fixed cellular wireless. Those two companies added 916,000 out of 962,000 total customer growth for the quarter. T-Mobile passed Lumen and Frontier in the quarter in terms of the total number of broadband customers.
| % 1Q | ||||
| 1Q 2023 | 4Q 2022 | 1Q Change | Change | |
| Comcast | 32,324,000 | 32,319,000 | 5,000 | 0.0% |
| Charter | 30,509,000 | 30,433,000 | 76,000 | 0.2% |
| AT&T | 15,345,000 | 15,386,000 | (41,000) | -0.3% |
| Verizon | 7,528,000 | 7,484,000 | 44,000 | 0.6% |
| Cox | 5,565,000 | 5,560,000 | 5,000 | 0.1% |
| Altice | 4,612,700 | 4,632,000 | (19,300) | -0.4% |
| T-Mobile FWA | 3,169,000 | 2,646,000 | 523,000 | 19.8% |
| Lumen | 2,981,000 | 3,037,000 | (56,000) | -1.8% |
| Frontier | 2,863,000 | 2,839,000 | 24,000 | 0.8% |
| Verizon FWA | 1,866,000 | 1,473,000 | 393,000 | 26.7% |
| Mediacom | 1,470,000 | 1,468,000 | 2,000 | 0.1% |
| Windstream | 1,175,000 | 1,175,000 | 0 | 0.0% |
| Cable ONE | 1,063,000 | 1,060,400 | 2,600 | 0.2% |
| Breezeline | 689,903 | 693,731 | (3,828) | -0.6% |
| TDS | 515,400 | 510,000 | 5,400 | 1.1% |
| Consolidated | 369,862 | 367,458 | 2,404 | 0.7% |
| Total | 112,045,865 | 111,083,589 | 962,276 | 0.9% |
| Cable | 76,233,603 | 76,166,131 | 67,472 | 0.1% |
| Telco | 30,777,262 | 30,798,458 | (21,196) | -0.1% |
| FWA | 5,035,000 | 4,119,000 | 916,000 | 22.2% |
The telcos collectively lost 21,000 customers for the quarter, but unlaying that number is the success story where telcos are collectively now adding as many customers on fiber as are being lost on DSL. After so many years of seeing Frontier bleeding broadband customers, it’s interesting to see the company now growing faster than the big cable companies. It’s hard to think that the telcos overall won be in a positive growth mode soon.
The only cable company with any significant growth is Charter – and that growth likely comes from the company now constructing fiber in some of the markets where it won the RDOF subsidies.
The only company on the list with a significant loss is Lumen, which lost 1.8% of its customers in the quarter. Lumen is also the telco with the least aggressive fiber growth plans.
There are several companies conspicuously missing from the list. It’s hard to think that Brightspeed and Google Fiber are not larger than the companies at the bottom of the list.