My Challenge to Cable Companies

Big cable companies are losing broadband customers. This started in earnest in the middle of last year, and the companies blamed the initial drops on the end of ACP. But the customer drops are real and likely permanent. Over the last four quarters, Comcast lost 545,000 broadband customers and Charter lost 496,000. Big cable companies are being besieged by FWA cellular wireless being sold by AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon, and by fiber overbuilders. Wall Street is punishing cable company stock prices for the losses, and it’s only going to get worse.

I have a potential solution for the cable companies that could reverse the customer losses, at least for a few years. The solution has the side benefit of also being very good for the country.

We are in the process of spending a lot of money to solve the rural broadband gap. The federal government threw a lot of money at the issue with multiple grant programs that are culminating in the $42.5 billion BEAD program. However, the government has not been willing to tackle the urban broadband gap, where an even larger number of residents don’t have home broadband. Part of the reason for this was from heavy lobbying from cable companies that didn’t want to see a penny of federal funding going to their competitors.

It’s a little hard to quantify the urban digital divide. According to the Pew Charitable Trusts, 43% of households earning less than $30,000 annually have no broadband access. 49% of those making less than $50,000 find it challenging to afford a broadband connection. Many of those who don’t have good broadband live in apartments. According to HUD, over 4.5 million families live in subsidized apartment units. Anybody who thinks broadband is complicated ought to look at the labyrinth of rules that govern the way the government subsidizes housing. This includes public housing, the Housing Choice Voucher Program (Section 8) and the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program (LIHTC).

A lot of subsidized housing doesn’t have adequate or affordable broadband. Many landlords have settled for WiFi in the halls – the same poor broadband solution that every business traveler hates in hotels.

The poor broadband in many apartment complexes can be blamed in part on out-of-date housing rules that compensate landlords for electricity and water but don’t consider broadband as a necessary utility. Landlords aren’t encouraged or rewarded for providing good broadband, although there is huge evidence that broadband is a necessity for people to participate in our digital society. Students without good broadband are particularly harmed, and studies show that those without home broadband fall significantly behind their peers in mastering the digital skills needed to work and thrive in our economy.

My challenge to cable companies is to tackle the urban digital divide, and to do so by starting with affordable housing apartment complexes. Bringing broadband to apartments would solve the problem of falling customer counts by replacing lost customers with millions of apartment units.

This will require a new way of thinking for a cable company. Broadband rates for affordable housing probably need to be between $10 and $20 dollars per month. While that may not sound like a lot of revenue, a cable company could pay for the upgrade costs to bring faster broadband to an apartment complex and could lock the landlord into a ten or twenty-year contract for service. Such contracts are lucrative over the long run because the income is guaranteed and there is no churn. This solution also doesn’t involve a subsidy that can disappear like happened with ACP.

Cable companies will also benefit from mountains of good local press. The federal government has turned its back on the urban digital divide, including the recent cancellation of the Digital Equity Act, and cable companies can make great hay by coming to the rescue.

Cable companies have always had it within their power to solve the urban digital divide. But now, with a falling customer base, I think they finally have an incentive to do so. It’s obvious in listening to the first quarter earnings announcements that cable companies are starting to quietly panic. Tackling the urban digital divide will require some creativity from the big cable companies, but tackling the urban digital divide is the right thing to do – for themselves and for urban America.

Eliminating Reconnect?

This is the third blog in a row about killing a federal broadband program – hopefully that’s it for a while. The most recent White House Budget proposes to eliminate the ReConnect grant program that is administered by the Rural Utilities Service (RUS), a branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. ReConnect has been a popular funding program in rural areas, and when it began was one of the few sources of federal broadband grants. ReConnect is an interesting program because awards include both grants and low-interest rate loans.

ReConnect has been funded in several different ways. The program was started in 2018 with a $600 million appropriation as part of funding the Department of Agriculture. Appropriations continued and provided $550 million in 2019, $655 million in 2020, and $437 million in 2022. In 2022, the program also got a giant boost of $1.926 billion through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which also funded BEAD grants.

The rules for ReConnect have always focused on very rural places. Eligibility for the awards improve based on the distance between a grant area and the nearest significant population center. One criticism I’ve heard about the program is that it has favored ISPs who were already borrowers from the RUS loan program, and reviews of awards tended to show some validity of that assertion. I think this was aligned with the RUS’s desire to make safe awards to companies that will fulfill the projects they commit to build.

The stated reason for curtailing ReConnect is to consolidate federal broadband grant programs. There is also another reason. Once BEAD grants are finally awarded, it’s going to be increasingly difficult, and maybe impossible, to find any large tracts of unserved rural locations that fit the ReConnect criteria. A new iteration of ReConnect would require a significantly different definition of eligible areas.

ISPs have liked ReConnect because the staff at RUS is more knowledgeable about the issues of building broadband in rural America than folks at NTIA or the FCC. One of the aspects that doesn’t get discussed much is the administration of grant funding after awards are made. ISPs want to work with a grant office that understands the technology and the components of building a broadband network. I’m sure that ISPs who are currently working with RUS on existing ReConnect awards will be hoping that grant administration doesn’t change to another agency in midstream.

Congress purposefully put the ReConnect program at the RUS. The agency has been making loans for rural communications infrastructure since 1949. The loan program was one of the major funders for rural cooperatives and small telephone companies over the decades. The property units that a lot of industry engineers still use in designing networks were developed by the RUS many decades ago.

I don’t think we’re done with the need for broadband loans and grants. I think there will be many millions of rural locations that will still need better broadband after the dust settles from BEAD and other grant programs. The process of determining areas eligible for BEAD was a disaster. I could be wrong, and it’s possible that satellite broadband can beef up speeds and capacity to serve every rural home that wants good broadband. But if not, we’re still going to want additional future grants to finish what BEAD has started.

There is no guarantee that asking for the elimination of ReConnect in a budget means this is a done deal. But there is some sense in consolidating the federal effort focused on rural broadband. If this comes to pass, I’ll be a little sad that the folks who have been doing this since 1949 might not the ones to help finish the job.

Killing FCC WiFi Hotspots

The U.S. Senate voted to kill the decision of the FCC to use the Universal Service Fund to fund WiFi hotspots for students and libraries. The House is supposed to take up the issue soon. The FCC approved this funding in 2024 under FCC Chairperson Jessica Rosenworcel. The plan was to use the E-Rate funding aimed at schools and libraries to provide hotspots that can bring temporary broadband to homes with no broadband connection.

The FCC created this program in response to requests from schools and libraries that were already lending hotspots. The idea of using hotspots leaped onto the scene during the pandemic when schools were looking for ways to keep students connected to schoolwork. Many school districts have kept the program running at a reduced level since the pandemic and asked the FCC if it would be possible to fund an expansion of the effort.

In the 2024 vote on the issue, then-FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr and FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington voted against the plan and argued that the E-Rate statute limits funding to only support classrooms and library buildings. You might ask why the Senate is voting on this instead of the FCC. The program is supposed to kick into gear soon, and until a fifth FCC Commissioner is seated, it’s likely that a vote at the FCC to end the program would end in a deadlocked tie.

It’s easy to understand why school systems wanted this program to help students do homework. Numerous studies have shown the benefits of good broadband on the effectiveness of education. One of the key studies that quantified this was released in March 2020 by the Quello Center, part of the Department of Media and Information at Michigan State University. The study was unique in that it was able to isolate the impact of having home broadband from other factors such as sex, race, and family income. The study involved 3,258 students in Michigan in grades 8 – 11 from schools described as rural.

The study showed significant performance differences for students with and without home broadband. Students with no Internet access at home tested lower on a range of metrics, including digital skills, homework completion, and grade point average. Some of the specific findings included:

  • Students with home Internet access had an overall grade point average of 3.18, while students with no Internet access at home had a GPA of 2.81.
  • During the study, 64% of students with no home Internet access sometimes left homework undone, compared to only 17% of students with a high-speed connection at home.
  • Students without home Internet access spend an average of 30 minutes longer doing homework each evening.
  • The study showed lower expectations for students without broadband at home. For example, 65% of students with fast home broadband have plans to pursue post-secondary education, while only 47% of students with no Internet access have such plans.
  • Perhaps the most important finding was that there is a huge gap in digital skills for students without home broadband. To quote the study, “The gap in digital skills between students with no home access or cell phone only and those with fast or slow home Internet access is equivalent to the gap in digital skills between 8th and 11th grade students.” It was a devastating finding that students without home broadband fall three grades behind other students in terms of developing digital skills.

It’s clear from a purely educational perspective that students benefit tremendously from having a source of broadband for schoolwork in the home. The stated reason for undoing the hotspot plan is that it violates the intentions of the E-Rate program, but the reversal also seems to be aimed at undoing something approved by the previous administration. The press is now covering the Senate action as a major reversal of policy, but I recall that when this was originally approved, it barely made a ripple in the news.

Administration Killing the Digital Equity Act

Last week, President Trump called for the end of the $2.75 billion in grants from the Digital Equity Act. The funding was approved as part of the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program.

The purpose of the program was to help close the broadband adoption gap by helping people learn how to use computers and to navigate the Internet. The grants were to be distributed in two ways. The State Digital Equity Capacity Grant Program reserved $1.44 for States to distribute through grants. The NTIA was slow in getting this program running, and grants were supposed to be launched starting in 2022. The NTIA finally announced $840 million in funding for States in 2024. It doesn’t appear that very much of this funding has been turned into grant awards.

The second part of the program was for the Digital Equity Competitive Grant Program that is administered directly by NTIA. The budget for this grant program was $1.25 billion, with 5% reserved for Native Entities, and 1% set aside for territories. The program was supposed to award $250 million per year in grants from 2022 until 2026. The NTIA was also slow in launching this program, but finally announced $619 in awards in January of this year. It seems certain that those awards will never get inked. There has been money awarded to states, but it’s not clear how much of that might have actually flowed to states since this seems to be a reimbursement grant program.

It’s a shame that almost none of this money has already been used. If NTIA had met the Congressional time line and intentions, 60% of the grants would already have been awarded in 2022, 2023 and 2024. The NTIA has defended the slow speed of the BEAD grant program, but Congress clearly intended for this money to flow quickly. I’m sure we’ll hear about how hard it was to make this work, but I have to think States would have been able to give their portion of this away if they had been given the money years ago. I remember a lot of non-profits that were already making plans to ask for this grant funding in 2021.

It’s hard to deny that there is a computer literacy gap in the country. I can’t find a specific definition of computer literacy, and different sources estimate the number of adults who are not computer literate between 30 million and 50 million. This program was part of the BEAD process that wanted to make sure that rural folks who don’t know how to use computers can take advantage of the expansion of rural broadband that is supposed to be coming from BEAD. The industry is still waiting to find out the status of the $42.5 billion in broadband grants, and seeing this program and ReConnect grants killed in the same week isn’t give anybody a warm and fuzzy feeling.

The President’s announcement said this funding is illegal, which is an odd stance since this was approved by Congress, which seems to be the very definition of legal. This cancellation announcement was not unexpected due move to kill all federal programs and activities that are considered to be DEI. It’s not clear how this is a DEI program other than the name of the grant program contains the word equity.

There is a lot of controversy surrounding the White House’s ability to kill grant programs that were created by Congress, and there are already a slew of lawsuits concerning other federal grants that have been cancelled or put on hold. A quick web search shows lawsuits associated with cancelled grants for the National Endowment for the Humanities, USAID, NIH research grants,  Covid-19 public health grants, and others.

There is always the chance that Congress will insist that these grants proceed, but recent lack of Congressional action probably means there is little chance of that.

2024 Remote Work Statistics

One of the most heavily touted benefits of good broadband is that it enables people to work from home. One might think that the ability to work from home has largely been solved since broadband speeds around the country have been climbing. But it seems like I’m on a Teams or Zoom call every week with somebody who struggles with upload connectivity  (including me from time to time).

I recently ran across an article from the U.S. Career Institute. This is an online college that’s been operating since 1981. The article lists a lot of recent statistics about working from home in the country.

Here are some of the most interesting statistics cited:

  • Remote workers save an average of 55 minutes a day by not commuting.
  • A fully remote employee saves up to $12,000 per year on gas, clothing, and buying lunch. Companies save up to $10,600 per remote employee by not having to pay for space and support.
  • A survey of remote workers cited health benefits like less burnout and stress, healthier food choices, improved sleep, and overall mental health.
  • Remote workers are more likely to move than others. The most common reason for remote workers to move is to be close to family and friends.
  • Millennials are the most likely to seek remote work. Gen Z are the least likely to seek remote work.
  • Colorado and Maryland have the highest percentage of remote workers at over 37%. The states with the lowest percentage of those working from home are Mississippi, Louisiana, Wyoming, and Arkansas.
  • The U.S. leads the work in remote work with hybrid employees working at home an average of 1.9 days per week while the worldwide average is 1.1 days.
  • Almost two-thirds of employees rank remote work as the most desirable trait of a job, ahead of salary.
  • 14% of employees say they will not go back to the office if their employer requires it.
  • 46% of remote workers say it’s easier to build relationships through remote work compared to being in an office.
  • On the negative side, 36% of remote workers said the onboarding process for remote work is challenging, and they feel undertrained.
  • 79% of managers say that remote workers are more productive.
  • Almost two-thirds of employers don’t allow a remote work option.
  • 16% of U.S. companies allow for fully remote work.
  • 26% of U.S. households have at least one person working remotely at least one day per week.
  • Senior-level employees tend to work more from home than junior-level employees.
  • People with advanced degrees have more options for remote work.

I keep seeing headlines about businesses bringing people back into the office. While these headlines are often sensational and worry folks who work at home, I think a lot of businesses have concluded that remote work is the best way to get work done while tending the bottom line.

New Radio over Coax

Charter, Rogers Communications, and CableLabs have collaborated on a new technology they are calling new radio over coax (NRoC). The immediate goal of the new technology is to use a cable company’s coaxial network to transmit 5G signals. In Charter’s case, the company wants to use new bandwidth to take advantage of Charter’s CBRS spectrum.

The technology to make this happen relies on opening up new spectrum inside the HFC (Hybrid fiber coaxial) network at frequencies higher than 1.8 GHz, which is the current bandwidth needed to implement DOCSIS 4.0. Much in the same way that DSL transmits broadband at a higher frequency on telephone copper, NRoC will transmit at a higher frequency that won’t interfere with the current network transmissions of video and broadband.

There are numerous potential uses for a cable company by opening a new data path on an HFC network. Charter wants to turn neighborhood HFC nodes into small cell sites using CBRS spectrum. Charter purchased a substantial amount of CBRS spectrum in 2020 and has already deployed several hundred CBRS transmitters in neighborhoods in North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. Charters wants to use its own CBRS spectrum to provide cellular relief in neighborhoods with high cellular demand and to reduce the MVNO cellular minutes it buys from Verizon.

Charter says that NRoC can transform the cost of small cell deployment. The company already has huge numbers of existing neighborhood nodes where the network transitions from fiber to coaxial cable. This technology would enable Charter to add a new small cell site at any node for a significantly lower cost than adding a traditional small cell site. Deploying NRoC radios takes advantage of existing networks and don’t require new backhaul or fiber construction.

Having a second data path across the whole network opens up a lot of other possibilities.

  • The extra bandwidth might be a good place to house AI software used to maximize the performance of the network.
  • The extra bandwidth could be used for new products, such as supporting communications with IoT sensors.
  • An intriguing possibility would be to use the extra bandwidth as a way to distribute earthbound traffic from direct-to-satellite cellular communications.

Charter hasn’t disclosed any details about the CableLabs development, but it’s not hard to envision dozens of market uses for a second data path for networks that are already routed into every neighborhood in urban and suburban markets.

Comparing American and British Broadband Prices

I’ve regularly heard that U.S. broadband prices are a lot higher than European prices. I found a way to check this when I ran across this article from ISPreview that has a long list of gigabit broadband prices across the UK.

The article includes the listed prices for 41 British ISPs for 2022, 2023, and current 2025 prices. This is not an exhaustive list and there are 140 ISPs in the UK that offer gigabit broadband today. The list includes the ISPs that ISPreview has been tracking since 2022.

The article includes only residential broadband prices. The ISPs use either hybrid fibre coax for cable companies or fibre. (notice the British spelling of fiber). The ISPs range from large to small, and urban and rural. The list includes nonprofit community ISPs, open-access ISPs, and commercial ISPs.

The prices in the article include the VAT (value added tax), which is administered the same as a sales tax. The VAT on broadband in the UK is 20%, so the ISPs only collect 80% of the prices shown, with the 20% going to the government.

Just like in the U.S., ISPs in the UK often have specials and promotions and sell broadband for less than the lost prices. Some of the prices in the article’s list show both the regular and the promotional prices.

The average list price for the UK ISPs in 2025 is £50.9, which is $67.70 in current dollars. Because of the VAT, ISPs only collect the equivalent of $56.42 today.

The main point of the article is that list prices have been dropping. Twenty-three ISPs on the list have lower list prices in 2025 compared to 2022. Twelve ISPs have higher prices. The rest have the same price as 2022. Overall, the average price in pounds dropped from £56.68 in 2022 to £50.9 today, an average drop in dollars of $7.68. The authors of the article found this drop to be extraordinary considering the inflation over the period and attributed the dropping prices to competition.

How do the UK list prices compare to U.S. list gigabit prices in 2025? The following table shows the list prices for gigabit broadband from some of the largest ISPs in the country. I got these prices from broadband labels. In some cases the U.S. prices include extra fees that are part of mandatory billing.This list of large U.S. ISPs has an average monthly list price rate of $93.87 in 2025. Many of these ISPs have far lower promotional rates for new subscribers, such as the new $70 gigabit offered by Comcast that’s guaranteed for five years. However, it’s still eye-opening to compare the average list price in the U.S. of $93.97 to the list average list price in the UK of $67.70, which is only $56.42 after removing the VAT tax. British gigabit list prices are 40% less expensive than U.S. gigabit broadband.

Comcast’s Woes

On the recent Comcast quarterly earnings call, the company’s President, Mike Cavanagh, admitted the company is having problems and said that Comcast isn’t ‘winning in the marketplace”. There are probably not a lot of people who will read this blog and shed a tear for Comcast. For much of the last decade, Comcast, along with Charter, thrived by taking customers away from telephone companies.

Comcast lost 199,000 net broadband customers in the first quarter. The losses may not seem significant for a company with 31.6 million customers, but if this quarterly loss is sustained the company will drop 2.5% of broadband customers for the year.

It’s obvious that both fiber overbuilders and FWA wireless are taking customers from Comcast. AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon added 913,000 new FWA customers in the first quarter of 2025 and haven’t slowed down on customer acquisition as some have predicted. It’s a little harder to quantify the additions to fiber in the quarter since dozens of companies are building fiber to compete with the big cable companies in various markets. But everything I hear says that in every new market where fiber appears, the fiber ISP is snagging a quick 30% to 40% market share.

Cavanaugh says there is a disconnect between the strength of the Comcast networks and the inability to win or keep customers. The company has concluded that the two primary causes for their problems are price transparency and predictability.

It’s clear that Comcast has been counting on having better broadband speeds as a lure to attract and retain customers. The company has been working to increase upload speeds in the current DOCSIS 3.1 networks, and the company announced in September 2024 that it was ready to go full bore on upgrading to DOCSIS 4.0, which will bring multi-gigabit upload and download speeds.

But that doesn’t seem to be impressing customers in the way the company hoped. I’m not sure what Comcast means by price transparency, but it’s clear to customers that Comcast has been the most expensive of the large ISPs. The company’s published list prices for 300 Mbps or faster broadband all pushed or exceeded $100 per month after counting the $15 monthly fee for a WiFi modem. Comcast list prices are far higher than FWA, priced at $55-$65 and also significantly above what most fiber ISPs charge.

It’s not hard to understand price predictability. Customers paying full prices for Comcast broadband have surely been dismayed to see the company continually lowering promotional prices as the company has tried to be more competitive. It seems like Comcast prices have been different every time I checked them in the last year.

It looks like Comcast is going to bite the price bullet. On the earnings call the company announced new pricing of 400 Mbps for $55 per month that includes the WiFi modem and is guaranteed for five years. The new price won’t require a customer contract. Comcast is also throwing in one line of cellular for free for a year.

This is going to be a drastic change for the company. In the third quarter of 2024, the company’s ARPU was $73.78 per customer per month, and these new prices will knock that lower. It’s going to be a grand experiment to see if guaranteed low prices can turn the corner for the company. I have to imagine millions of existing customers are going to ask for that price, and it’s going to be hard to say no to them.

Lower prices will not change the fact that urban broadband is growing increasingly competitive. Comcast thrived for years by charging high prices in noncompetitive markets to offset lower prices in competitive ones. But noncompetitive markets are becoming a thing of the past.

Comcast did have one piece of good news in the first quarter. The company added 345,000 new cellular customers. That puts them on par with the other big carriers. T-Mobile added 495,000; AT&T added 324,000; Charter added 514,000; and Verizon added 94,000.

Full Speed Ahead

State Broadband Offices have seemingly aligned to put pressure on the federal government to get the BEAD awards made and the construction process started this year. While there might be a few exceptions, most State Broadband Offices have accelerated the grant review process and are either ready to make BEAD awards now or soon will be in a position to do so.

This is an interesting strategy because it seems to be coupled with getting State and local officials to lobby for a rapid conclusion of the grant process. County Boards and governors have been asking federal elected officials to let the BEAD process play out.

This is not to say that folks don’t want to see some changes in BEAD. For example, there are popular ideas in the federal SPEED for BEAD Act that would make it easier for ISPs to build. Those kinds of changes could be incorporated into BEAD contracts with grant winners without slowing down the process. Grant Offices and local officials fear a total reshuffling of the rules will force States to start the process all over again. If the decision at NTIA is to change grant scoring metrics, then it probably means changing the BEAD Volume 2 rules and having ISPs file all over again for the BEAD grants. It’s hard to imagine that a change like that won’t add six months to a year to making grant awards and would kill the chance of any broadband construction in 2025.

One of the most convincing things I’ve seen on the topic is a letter published by Broadband Communities Magazine. The letter was written by Josh Etheridge, the Co-Owner of EPC, a fiber construction firm. He pleads with officials to release the BEAD funding in Louisiana and says that delays have already forced him to start laying off some of his 160 full-time staff and an equal number of subcontractors. He makes the convincing argument that BEAD money ultimately gets spent supporting jobs in local communities – which was the stated purpose of the IIJA legislation that created BEAD.

NTIA says it will hopefully be ready to provide new guidance on BEAD around mid-May. So far, everybody associated with the NTIA BEAD process has been completely noncommittal about what changes might be coming. The only thing of substance that has been hinted at is that BEAD awards ought to be more technology-neutral to cut down on amount of grant funding needed. It’s that statement that has the whole industry on edge and on hold.

The BEAD grants were allocated to States in an extremely uneven manner since money was allocated using faulty FCC maps. Some States have enough BEAD money to mostly fund a fiber solution, as has been done in Louisiana. But even there, some of the money went to alternate technologies to serve remote locations. Other states are going to have to make substantial grants to non-fiber technologies to make the numbers work.

Broadband Offices and State and local officials all want to see the grant funding awarded to their states to build as much fiber as possible while still assuring that all BEAD-eligible locations get some better broadband solution. I think the big fear is not only that more funding will go to satellite, but that ‘excess funds’ will be reclaimed by Treasury and not spent on broadband. The phrase ‘once in a generation’ funding has probably been used too often for BEAD, to the point that people don’t really hear what it means. States are doing a magnificent job of spreading the BEAD money to bring as much public benefit as possible – and they are all asking to be left alone to finish the job.

We’ll find out in a few weeks if the strategy of plowing forward will be convincing. It’s certainly the fastest way to turn BEAD grants into construction projects.

Tariff Uncertainty

This is a blog about uncertainty because it’s hard to know what else to say about the impact of tariffs on the broadband industry – other than we know there will be an impact. Right now, the tariff situation is in utter turmoil. Every ISP I talked to about the issue had the same concerns. They are all hoping for certainty. They can deal with price increases, but they can’t deal with not knowing the situation for building a year from now.

ISPs generally plan a year ahead. The networks they are building now were planned in 2024, and many ISPs are paralyzed about what to plan for 2025. I’ve been through other periods of economic uncertainty during my career, and every time, the most common reaction to uncertainty from ISPs has been to take a pause until the uncertainty ended. If the tariff situation doesn’t soon become predictable, I would expect 2025 construction to slow significantly, particularly for smaller ISPs.

The first place I would normally go to get a feel about the impact of any big changes for the whole industry is to see what big ISPs have to say about it. The big ISPs have quarterly earnings calls, and Wall Street expects them to talk about expected changes in their company in the next quarter and next year. I listened to the recent earnings calls for Comcast, Charter, and T-Mobile, and the companies were all coy and noncommittal on the tariff topic.

Perhaps the easiest way to think about tariffs is by industry segment. I’ve been thinking about what will happen if tariffs settle in at something like the original announcement of 10% tariffs across the board.

Fiber ISPs would probably have the smallest impact of tariffs – but it’s not zero. Fiber is made domestically. Fiber electronics will be shielded from tariffs to some extent since the major electronics vendors established US manufacturing to prepare for BEAD grants. But those factories still rely on some imported components. Perhaps the biggest impact will come for non-grant construction since those ISPs have continued to buy cheaper imported electronics. It will be interesting to see if the new U.S. factories can supply everybody. I suspect they can’t. But even if they can, U.S. electronics are more expensive than the imported electronics before tariffs.

Cable companies are not going to be so lucky. Companies like CommScope and Vecima Networks that make cable electronics have already said they will have big hits from tariffs. We’ll have to see if this results in a slowdown of upgrades of cable networks to DOCSIS 4.0 or mid-splits. Day-to-day components like settop boxes are mostly manufactured overseas.

WISPs and cellular carriers are likely to see a hit from tariffs since most of their electronics are imported. There are American makers of towers and related equipment. Cellphone prices would increase from tariffs, but for now those tariffs have been reversed.

All ISPs are going to see a hit on WiFi gear, which is almost all imported.

ISPs and carriers buy a lot of vehicles, and it looks like the cost of new vehicles will be climbing.

The surprising increases are going to come on the little stuff like the small hardware needed for all kinds of network construction. The worry is not just that those prices might climb, but that there will be supply chain interruptions.

Any ISP that is building a network funded by grant dollars has to be worried since grants awarded in past years will not be increased, and the ISP will have to absorb the full impact of tariff increases. I have to wonder if this will put more pressure on defaults for RDOF and other previous grants if ISPs see grant projects becoming unviable. I won’t be shocked if some of the companies winning BEAD grants change their mind by the time they are asked to sign a grant contract later this year.

The bottom line is that uncertainty is not good for the industry, and I think the reactions we’ll be seeing from ISPs will be more a reaction to uncertainty than to cost increases.