Broadband Trajectories

For most the dozen years I’ve been writing this blog, the biggest cable companies accounted for almost all of the growth in broadband customers. Quarter after quarter, and year after year, the big cable companies were the source of almost all new net broadband customers.

This started to shift a few years ago when FWA cellular home broadband from T-Mobile, Verizon, and more recently, AT&T entered the scene. For the last couple of years, almost all of the net broadband growth in the country came from the FWA technology and these three carriers.

It’s clear that we’re now entering a new stage the industry where cable broadband losses are accelerating, where FWA growth hasn’t slowed, and where the big telcos are growing again because of their expansion of fiber.

Consider the following statistics that show the net change in broadband customers over the last year, and for the latest quarter, for the largest cable companies, largest telcos, and FWA carriers. There are a few big companies missing from this comparison like Cox, Mediacom, and Windstream, since those companies are privately held and don’t publicly report customer counts.

These numbers show that telcos other than Lumen are growing again. The numbers for telcos don’t tell the whole story because net customer changes in the table include both DSL losses and fiber gains. For example, during the last year, AT&T added over 1 million customers to fiber.

These trajectories don’t bode well for the big cable companies. There were a lot of predictions made last year that FWA growth would slow down, and that doesn’t seem to be the case yet in 2025. The telcos are all picking up steam in terms of adding fiber customers. It’s going to be interesting over the coming years to see how the biggest cable companies fare in battling everybody else. Charter has decided to fight the trend through the merger with Cox. We’ll have to wait and see what the rest have in mind.

The Year of Huge Mergers?

Is this finally going to be the year when the largest ISPs gobble up everybody else of size? There was big news in the industry on Friday when Charter announced it is merging with Cox Communications. Cox has over 6.5 million customers and the combined business will be the largest ISP that covers over 70 million passings, exceeding Comcast’s 64 million passings.

The announced value of the merger is $34.5 billion. Cox is a privately held company, and the owners of Cox will receive:

  • $4 billion in cash
  • $6 billion in convertible preferred equity that holds a 6.875% coupon. These shares can be exchanged for Charter common stock.
  • Approximately 33.6 million units of Charter’s existing partnership, with an implied value of $11.9 billion, which can also be exchanged for Charter common stock.
  • Charter will absorb Cox’s $12 billion in debt.
  • If all of the convertible equity were converted to common stock, the current Cox owners would own 23% of Charter common stock.

Charter announced some interesting benefits of the merger:

  • The combined companies will rebrand at the corporate level as Cox Communications within a year after closing. The company will keep the Spectrum brand name.
  • Charter expects to realize about $500 million per year in savings upon consolidation. That likely means layoffs.
  • Cox broadband prices are higher than Charter’s, so Cox customers will have the opportunity to lower rates.
  • The merger will bring Cox customer service back to U.S. call centers from overseas.
  • The merger expands the opportunity to grow Charter’s cellular service.
  • Advertisers will reach a larger customer base.
  • There is more opportunity to leverage the benefits of AI.

Starting in 2022, Cox announced a major emphasis on converting its coaxial networks to 10-gigabit fiber. The company has built fiber in markets like Phoenix, Mesa, Hampton Roads, and other markets. As a privately-held company, Cox never talked about numbers, so we don’t know the extent of its fiber conversions.

The FCC also approved the merger of Verizon and Frontier on Friday, and the number of potential ISP acquisition targets is quickly shrinking. After this transaction, the only remaining ISP merger targets with more than 1 million broadband customers are Altice (4.2 million), Lumen (2.5 million), Mediacom (1.4 million), and Cable One (1 million). The only other ISP that is probably close to a million is GFiber. Earlier this year, there were rumors that Charter was looking at Altice.

The merger announcement comes at a time when Charter has announced losses of 496,000 broadband customers over the last year. All of the big cable companies are losing customers, and its likely that Cox has been doing so as well. It will be interesting to see how Wall Street reacts to the merger. Charter stock quickly rose 4% after the merger as announced but ended up only 1% higher for the day.

Trouble in Kentucky

I’ve been reading dire headlines coming out of Kentucky related the operation of the 3,200 KentuckyWired statewide middle-mile network under the administration of the Kentucky Communications Network Authority (KCNA). Headlines have been warning about a shutdown of the network due to a dispute between KCNA and Accelecom, a for-hire operator of the network.

KCNA terminated the agreement with Accelecom in January. KCNA accused Accelecom of violating the operating contract. Accelecom was said to be using the network to provide retail connections while denying dark fiber connections on the network to other ISPs. KCNA also accused Accelecom of not allowing an audit and of not making payments to the State. The dispute between the two parties ended up in court and resulted in an order to give customer a 30-day notice in mid-April that service might be terminated.

The KentuckyWired network has been controversial since its beginning in 2015. The network got its genesis in discussions between the State and Macquarie Capital from Australia, a large international infrastructure funder. This agreement was touted as a public-private partnership, but Macquarie only funded about 2% of the network while eyeing a lot of profits to be made as the operator of half of the network as a wholesale operator.

Macquarie originally asked the State to fund $1.2 billion to fund the network – money that was not readily available at the time. The State signed an agreement with Macquarie to proceed and counted on funding from the FCC’s E-Rate program as a major source of funding. That funding was not actually available as had been promised by a consultant who was the husband of a Cabinet Secretary. The State pivoted to try to move all state buildings to the network but ran afoul of State procurement rules. Kentucky proceeded to fund and build the network since it still saw great value in the ability to bring backhaul to the many rural parts of the state.

There were a lot of problems building the network due to getting access to rural poles that were often in bad shape. The project went significantly over budget and took a lot longer to build than originally planned. Macquarie remained as the operator and renamed itself as Accelecom.

To some degree the network has fulfilled its goal and provides backhaul to 44 ISPs and directly serves a wide range of locations from court houses to hospitals. However, part of the dispute that led to the cancellation of the contract is that Accelecom wouldn’t provide dark fiber access to ISPs as is required by the open-access rules.

It’s a little unclear how many customers might go dark when Accelecom stops operating this month. In many cases, ISPs have other backhaul connections or are scrambling to find them. But it seems that some rural ISPs completely rely on the KentuckyWired connection.

I guess there are several lessons to be learned from this mess. One is that governments ought to be careful of the partners they choose for public-private partnerships. Macquarie Capital has been accused in numerous ventures around the world of skirting the rules and violating agreements to maximize its earnings. Kentucky would have been much better served by working with the ISPs in the state to build and operate a middle-mile network, as has been done in other states. Macquarie was chosen without the open bidding process and public discussions that would be expected for such a large undertaking.

The second lesson is that any agreement related to a network ought to have provisions that the network can’t be shut down if there is a dispute between the operators. It’s extremely rare for a network to go dark and strand customers. Even if Accelecom walks away, the network is still in place operating and there should have been a contractual contingency plan to keep the lights on while the parties separately negotiate dollar issues. The State and Macquarie will continue to point fingers at each other, but the truth is that both contributed to the current disaster.

The third lesson is that middle-mile fiber networks can bring great benefits. Kentucky is the poster child of a state with remote pockets of rural households, and the KentuckyWired network has brought broadband to areas that would not have otherwise had it. There are a lot of better ways to fund and operate a middle-mile network than the mess Kentucky created, but there is no denying that building the network was a good idea.

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.