Tag Archives: Leichtman Research Group

Cable Customer Losses in 2Q 2023

Leichtman Research Group recently released the cable customer counts for the largest providers of traditional cable service in the second quarter of 2023. LRG compiles most of these numbers from the statistics provided to stockholders, except for Cox and Mediacom – they now combine an estimate for both companies. Leichtman says this group of companies represents 96% of all traditional U.S. cable customers.

The traditional cable providers continue to lose customers at a torrid pace, losing over 1.6 million customers in the second quarter, slightly fewer losses than the second quarter of 2022. Overall, the traditional cable providers lost over 17,700 customers every day during the quarter. The overall penetration of traditional cable TV is now around 46% of all households, down from 73% at the end of 2017.

2Q 2022 Change Change
Comcast 14,985,000 (543,000) -3.5%
Charter 14,706,000 (200,000) -1.3%
DirecTV 12,350,000 (400,000) -3.1%
Dish Network 6,901,000 (197,000) -2.8%
Cox & Mediacom 3,340,000 (100,000) -2.9%
Verizon 3,155,000 (70,000) -2.2%
Altice 2,405,900 (69,900) -2.8%
Breezeline 296,952 (3,732) -1.2%
Frontier 267,000 (21,000) -7.3%
Cable ONE 158,100 (8,900) -5.3%
   Total 58,564,952 (1,613,532) -2.7%
YouTube 5,900,000 200,000 3.5%
Hulu Live 4,300,000 (100,000) -2.3%
Sling TV 2,003,000 (97,000) -4.6%
FuboTV 1,167,000 (118,000) -9.2%
Total Cable Company 35,733,852 (916,632) -2.5%
Total Telco / Satellite 22,673,000 (688,000) -2.9%
Total vMvPD 13,370,000 (115,000) -0.9%

It doesn’t look like people are replacing traditional cable with an online alternative like YouTube and Hulu Live – which collectively lost 115,000 customers in the quarter.

Charter is still losing customers at a slower rate than other traditional cable companies. At current trends, Charter ought to have the most cable customers soon – something that could not have been imagined only three or four years ago.

The biggest news is that Comcast is one of the biggest percentage losers, and the biggest overall loser, down 543,000 cable customers in the quarter. The biggest percentage losers continue to be Frontier and Cable ONE.

Broadband Customers 2Q 2023

Leichtman Research Group recently released broadband customer statistics for the end of the second 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, and now reported together. 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 903,000 customers, while the rest of the ISPs collectively lost over 52,000 customers.

2Q 2023 1Q 2023 1Q Change % Change
Comcast 32,305,000 32,324,000 (19,000) -0.1%
Charter 30,586,000 30,509,000 77,000 0.3%
AT&T 15,304,000 15,345,000 (41,000) -0.3%
Verizon 7,562,000 7,528,000 34,000 0.5%
Cox & Mediacom 7,035,000 7,035,000 0 0.0%
Altice 4,576,100 4,612,700 (36,600) -0.8%
T-Mobile FWA 3,678,000 3,169,000 509,000 16.1%
Lumen 2,909,000 2,981,000 (72,000) -2.4%
Frontier 2,865,000 2,863,000 2,000 0.1%
Verizon FWA 2,260,000 1,866,000 394,000 21.1%
Windstream 1,175,000 1,175,000 0 0.0%
Cable ONE 1,057,900 1,063,000 (5,100) -0.5%
Breezeline 680,785 687,519 (6,734) -1.0%
TDS 523,600 515,400 8,200 1.6%
Consolidated 376,829 369,862 6,967 1.9%
Total 112,894,214 112,043,481 850,733 0.8%
Cable 76,240,785 76,231,219 9,566 0.0%
Telco 30,715,429 30,777,262 (61,833) -0.2%
FWA 5,938,000 5,035,000 903,000 17.9%

The telcos collectively lost almost 62,000 customers in the quarter despite gains from Verizon FiOS, TDS, and Consolidated of 49,000 customers for the quarter. The biggest loser was Lumen, losing 72,000 broadband customers.

The only cable company with positive growth was Charter – its strategy of expanding its footprint into rural areas is clearly paying off.

It’s hard to see from these numbers where the huge growth of FWA wireless broadband is coming from. Much of the FWA growth is coming in rural markets where the competition is fixed wireless and satellite service. But FWA pricing seems to be aimed squarely at competing with DSL and probably counts for the overall losses for AT&T and Lumen. Both companies are adding fiber customers and are losing DSL customers more quickly than indicated by the overall numbers. I’m sure AT&T hates the loss of DSL revenue, but competition from FWA makes it that much easier for the company to eventually walk away from rural copper.

 

Traditional Cable Continues to Dive

The largest traditional cable providers collectively lost over 1.8 million customers in the first quarter of 2023 – an overall loss of 2.9% of customers. To put the quarter’s loss into perspective, the big cable providers lost almost 20,000 cable customers per day throughout the quarter.

The numbers below come from Leichtman Research Group which compiles these numbers from reports made to investors, except for Cox and Mediacom, which is estimated. The numbers reported are for the largest cable providers, and LRG estimates that these companies represent 95% of all cable customers in the country.

Following is a comparison of the first quarter subscriber numbers compared to the end of the 2022:

1Q 2023 4Q 2022 1Q Change % Change
Comcast 15,528,000 16,142,000 (614,000) -3.8%
Charter 14,906,000 15,147,000 (241,000) -1.6%
DirecTV 12,750,000 13,100,000 (350,000) -2.7%
Dish TV 7,098,000 7,416,000 (318,000) -4.3%
Verizon 3,225,000 3,301,000 (76,000) -2.3%
Cox 2,950,000 3,050,000 (100,000) -3.3%
Altice 2,475,800 2,536,300 (60,500) -2.4%
Mediacom 490,000 510,000 (20,000) -3.9%
Breezeline 300,684 309,627 (8,943) -2.9%
Frontier 288,000 306,000 (18,000) -5.9%
Cable ONE 167,000 181,500 (14,500) -8.0%
Total 60,178,484 61,999,427 (1,820,943) -2.9%
YouTube 5,700,000 5,600,000 100,000 1.8%
Hulu Live 4,400,000 4,500,000 (100,000) -2.2%
Sling TV 2,100,000 2,334,000 (234,000) -10.0%
FuboTV 1,285,000 1,445,000 (160,000) -11.1%
Total Cable 36,817,484 37,876,427 (1,058,943) -2.8%
Total Other 23,361,000 24,123,000 (762,000) -3.2%
Total vMvPD 13,485,000 13,879,000 (394,000) -2.8%

Some observations about the numbers:

  • The big overall loser is now Comcast, which lost a net of 614,000 traditional video customers in the quarter.
  • The big percentage losers continued to be Frontier which lost 5.9% of its cable customers, and cable ONE that lost 8% of customers.
  • Charter lost the lowest percentage of customers at 1.6% of its customer base, but that still totaled to be 241,000 customers.

To put these losses into perspective, these same companies had over 85 million cable customers at the end of 2018 – a loss since then of 25 million customers (29%).

The biggest online programming providers are also losing customers, and collectively lost 2.8% of customers for the quarter, the same as the cable companies. It’s clear that a lot of homes are cleanly cutting the cord and replacing traditional channel lineups with something else.

A few folks have asked me why I continue to track cable subscriptions. First, while cable is getting slaughtered in the market, half of all U.S. homes continue to use some form of traditional cable. Second, these big losses for the big cable companies are part of what is driving them to continue to raise broadband rates, even as they’ve stopped adding broadband customers. I think this is still relevant as long as the majority of cable customers are served by the largest ISPs. But ultimately, it’s hard to stop watching a slow motion train wreck while it’s happening.

A Repeat Performance for Cable 4Q 2022

The traditional cable companies lost over 6.25 million cable subscribers in 2022, up from 5.6 million in 2021. That means that almost one in every twenty homes in the country dropped traditional cable TV during the last year.

These numbers come from Leichtman Research Group, which compiles most of these numbers from the statistics provided to stockholders, except for Cox, which is privately held and estimated. Leichtman says this group of companies represents 96% of all traditional U.S. cable customers.

% 4Q Annual
4Q 2022 4Q Change Change Change
Comcast 16,142,000 (440,000) -2.7% (2,034,000)
Charter 15,147,000 (144,000) -0.9% (686,000)
DirecTV 13,100,000 (400,000) -3.0% (1,500,000)
Dish TV 7,416,000 (191,000) -2.5% (805,000)
Verizon 3,301,000 (82,000) -2.4% (343,000)
Cox 3,050,000 (90,000) -2.9% (340,000)
Altice 2,439,000 (52,800) -2.1% (293,300)
Mediacom 510,000 (15,000) -2.9% (62,000)
Breezeline 309,627 (13,411) -4.2% (37,102)
Frontier 306,000 (16,000) -5.0% (74,000)
Cable ONE 181,500 (20,500) -10.1% (79,500)
Total 61,902,127 (1,464,711) -2.3% (6,253,902)
Hulu Live 4,500,000 100,000 2.3% 200,000
Sling TV 2,334,000 (77,000) -3.2% (152,000)
FuboTV 1,445,000 214,000 17.4% 323,000
Total Cable 37,779,127 (775,711) -2.0% (3,531,902)
Total Other 24,123,000 (689,000) -2.8% (2,722,000)
Total vMvPD 8,279,000 237,000 2.9% 371,000

The losses are fairly even across the industry, with most cable providers seeing around a 10% drop in cable customers during the year. The exceptions were Charter, which lost only 4.3%, Frontier that lost almost 20%, and Cable One (Sparklight) that lost over 30% of customers. If these trends continue for another year, Charter will pass Comcast and become the largest traditional cable provider.

The magnitude of the losses are staggering, with Comcast losing over 2 million cable customers during the year and DirecTV losing 1.5 million.

To put the loss of cable customers into context, these same large companies had over 85 million cable customers at the end of 2018 and are now down to under 62 million customers.

In the fourth quarter, the three online cable alternatives that LRG tracks gained 371,000 new customers for the year, A few major online alternatives, like YouTube TV aren’t on the list since they don’t announce customer counts.

2022 Was a Year of Change for the Big ISPs

There was a sea change among the big ISPs in 2022. The big news is that most of the growth in the industry came from the T-Mobile and Verizon cellular FWA broadband product. Cable company growth crawled to a halt after a robust 2021, and the sector only grew by 55,000 net broadband customers in the fourth quarter. The big telcos still had small losses for the year, but the big news is that they added 2.4 million customers to fiber during the year.

The following list of ISPs represents about 95% of the U.S. broadband market. The large ISPs, in aggregate, added just over 3.5 million net customers in 2022. The two cellular FWA companies added 3,171,000 of those additions. Cable companies added 517,103 customers for the year, with most of the growth coming at the beginning of the year. The big telcos had a net loss of 181,276 customers but continued to furiously replace DSL with fiber.

The following statistics were compiled by the Leichtman Research Group, which tracks the broadband performance of the largest ISPs in the country. Following are the customers counts for the fourth quarter and the end of year 2022:

% 4Q Annual
4Q 2022 4Q Change Change Change
Comcast 32,151,000 (26,000) -0.1% 250,000
Charter 30,433,000 105,000 0.3% 344,000
AT&T 15,386,000 (66,000) -0.4% (118,000)
Verizon 7,484,000 37,000 0.5% 119,000
Cox 5,560,000 0 0.0% 30,000
Altice 4,282,900 (7,700) -0.2% (103,300)
Lumen 3,037,000 (63,250) -2.0% (253,000)
Frontier 2,839,000 8,000 0.3% 40,000
T-Mobile FWA 2,646,000 524,000 24.7% 2,000,000
Mediacom 1,468,000 0 0.0% 5,000
Verizon FWA 1,452,000 389,000 36.6% 1,171,000
Windstream 1,175,000 0 0.0% 10,300
Cable ONE 1,060,400 (1,600) -0.2% 14,400
Breezeline 693,781 (14,173) -2.0% (22,997)
TDS 510,000 3,500 0.7% 19,700
Consolidated 367,458 (14,454) -3.8% 724
Total 110,545,539 873,323 0.8% 3,506,827
Cable 75,649,081 55,527 0.1% 517,103
Telco 30,798,458 (95,204) -0.3% (181,276)
FWA 4,098,000 913,000 28.7% 3,171,000

There are a lot of interesting trends withing these numbers:

  • T-Mobile is now the 9th largest ISP, and the Verizon FWA product comes in at eleventh. T-Mobile is poised to pass Frontier and Lumen soon at the current growth rate.
  • While all of the landline ISPs on the list are feeling pressure from the cellular FWA product, the bigger and more permanent challenge for the cable companies is the 2.4 million telco customers added to fiber to the year. That statistic shows why cable companies are scrambling to improve upload speeds.
  • The biggest loser on the list continues to be Lumen, which lost 7.7% of its broadband customers for the year. It’s worth noting that the above numbers represent the smaller Lumen after the spinoff of Brightspeed in 2022. Breezeline (Formerly Atlantic Broadband) was the biggest percentage loser among cable companies, having lost 3.3% of broadband customers during the year.
  • TDS continues to be the fastest-growing landline ISP at 4.0% growth for the year. Next is Verizon FiOS, having grown by 1.6% for the year.

A Repeat Performance for Cable TV 3Q22

Traditional cable providers continue to lose cable TV customers at the same fast pace as the second quarter of the year. In the third quarter, the cable companies list 1.68 million customers after losing over 1.65 million customers in the second quarter.

These numbers come from Leichtman Research Group, which compiles most of these numbers from the statistics provided to stockholders, except for Cox, which is privately held and estimated. Leichtman says this group of companies represents 96% of all traditional U.S. cable customers.

2Q 2022 Change Change
Comcast 16,582,000 (562,000) -3.3%
Charter 15,291,000 (204,000) -1.3%
DirecTV 13,500,000 (400,000) -2.9%
Dish Network 7,607,000 (184,000) -2.4%
Verizon 3,383,000 (96,000) -2.8%
Cox 3,140,000 (90,000) -2.8%
Altice 2,491,800 (82,400) -3.2%
Mediacom 525,000 (15,000) -2.8%
Frontier 322,000 (21,000) -6.1%
Breezeline 323,038 (9,274) -2.8%
Cable ONE 202,000 (19,000) -8.6%
   Total 63,366,838 (1,682,674) -2.6%
Hulu Live 4,400,000 400,000 10.0%
Sling TV 2,211,000 214,000 9.7%
FuboTV 1,231,000 284,265 30.0%
Total Cable 39,536,512 (981,674) -2.5%
Total Telco / Satellite 25,513,000 (701,000) -2.7%
Total vMvPD 7,143,735 898,265 12.6%

The losses are fairly even across the industry, with every large provider except Charter losing more than 2% of total cable customers for the quarter. At the current pace, the industry might lose 10% of all cable customers this year. To put these numbers into perspective, these same companies had over 85 million cable customers at the end of 2018 – the industry has lost over a quarter of its customers since then.

In the quarter, the three online cable alternatives that LRG tracks gained almost 900,000 new customers for the quarter, A few major online alternatives, like YouTube TV aren’t on the list since they don’t announce customer counts.

The biggest percentage losers continue to be Frontier and Cable ONE, with Comcast the third largest.

Traditional Cable in Less than Half of Households

Leichtman Research Group recently released the cable customer counts for the largest providers of traditional cable service at the end of the second quarter of 2022. LRG compiles most of these numbers from the statistics provided to stockholders, except for Cox, which is privately held and estimated. Leichtman says this group of companies represents 96% of all traditional U.S. cable customers.

The traditional cable providers continue to lose customers at a torrid pace, losing over 1.65 million customers in the second quarter, up from 1.4 million customers the previous quarter. Overall, the traditional cable providers lost almost 18,200 customers every day during the quarter.

The big news for the quarter is that traditional cable providers are now in less than half of homes and have collectively dropped to a 49% market penetration. The industry has lost almost seventeen million customers since the end of 2017, when traditional cable was in over 73% of homes.

2Q 2022 Change Change
Comcast 17,144,000 (520,000) -2.9%
Charter 15,495,000 (226,000) -1.4%
DirecTV 13,900,000 (400,000) -2.8%
Dish Network 7,791,000 (202,000) -2.5%
Verizon 3,479,000 (87,000) -2.4%
Cox 3,230,000 (80,000) -2.4%
Altice 2,574,200 (84,500) -3.2%
Mediacom 540,000 (15,000) -2.7%
Frontier 343,000 (20,000) -5.5%
Breezeline 332,312 (6,709) -2.0%
Cable ONE 221,000 (17,000) -7.1%
   Total 65,049,512 (1,658,209) -2.5%
Hulu Live 4,000,000 (100,000) -2.4%
Sling TV 2,197,000 (55,000) -2.4%
FuboTV 946,735 (109,510) -10.4%
Total Cable 39,536,512 (949,209) -2.3%
Total Telco / Satellite 25,513,000 (709,000) -2.7%
Total vMvPD 7,143,735 (264,510) -3.6%

It doesn’t look like people are replacing traditional cable with an online alternative like Hulu and Sling TV – which collectively lost 264,000 customers in the quarter. A few major online alternatives like YouTube TV aren’t on the list, but the loss in traditional cable far surpasses any possible net gain for the online cable alternatives.

Charter is still losing customers at a slower rate than everybody else in the industry and has for the past several years – although Charter’s losses are starting to climb. Charter CEO Tom Rutledge says that Charter actively points out to customers that the online alternatives cost more. The rest of the industry seems resigned to letting cable customers go.

The biggest percentage losers continue to be Frontier and Cable ONE.

Traditional Big ISPs Stagnate

In the first quarter of this year, the big cable companies added 482,000 customers while telcos added over 50,000 customers. In what is a surprise to the industry, that growth has disappeared, and all of the big ISPs collectively lost almost 150,000 customers. That’s a loss of 60,000 customers for the cable companies and 88,000 for the big telcos.

The following statistics have been compiled by the Leichtman Research Group, which tracks the broadband performance of the largest ISPs in the country.

The other big news is that the Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) products of T-Mobile and Verizon added 816,000 customers in the second quarter to bring the sector to net growth of 668,000 customers. This is huge news – FWA is booming while the big ISPs are standing still. The FWA product is home broadband delivered using cellular frequencies. T-Mobile and Verizon are aggressively marketing the product, which is touted to have download speeds over 100 Mbps. The market is going to get even hotter when AT&T and Dish networks enter the market in a big way.

The numbers for the second quarter of 2022:

 2Q 2022 2Q Change % Change  
Comcast 32,163,000 0 0.0%  
Charter 30,253,000 (21,000) -0.1%  
AT&T 15,509,000 (24,000) -0.2%  
Verizon 7,412,000 12,000 0.2%  
Cox 5,560,000 0 0.0%  
Lumen 4,377,000 (93,000) -2.1%  
Altice 4,333,600 (39,600) -0.9%  
Frontier 2,827,000 8,000 0.3%  
T-Mobile FWA 1,544,000 560,000 56.9%  
Mediacom 1,468,000 0 0.0%  
Windstream 1,178,500 2,500 0.2%  
Cable ONE 1,059,000 2,000 0.2%  
Breezeline 717,919 (1,689) -0.2%  
Verizon FWA 700,000 256,000 57.7%  
TDS 500,800 5,600 1.1%  
Consolidated 381,213 1,063 -0.2%  
   Total 109,984,032 667,874 0.3%  
         
Total Cable 75,554,519 (60,289) -0.1%  
Total Telco 32,185,513 (87,837) -0.3%  
FWA 2,244,000 816,000 57.1%  

There is a lot to unpack in these numbers:

  • The cable companies have gained customers every quarter for far longer than a decade, so this net loss for the sector is a big surprise.
  • There is another story underneath the big telco losses – fiber is doing well. AT&T added 316,000 fiber customers in the quarter but still had a small net customer loss. Frontier added 54,000 fiber customers for the quarter and had a small net customer gain. Verizon added 36,000 FiOS customers in the quarter. Lumen added 28,000 fiber customers for the quarter but continued to bleed DSL customers.
  • T-Mobile leaped to become the ninth largest ISP in the country.
  • TDS repeated as the fastest growing traditional ISP.
  • Lumen lost the largest percentage of customers compared to other telcos. Altice was the biggest percentage loser among cable companies.

Cable Subscriptions Continue to Dive

Leichtman Research Group recently released the cable customer counts for the largest providers of traditional cable service at the end of the first quarter of 2022. LRG compiles most of these numbers from the statistics provided to stockholders, except for Cox, which is privately held and estimated. Leichtman says this group of companies represents 96% of all traditional U.S. cable customers.

The industry continues to bleed customers, losing over 1.4 million customers in the fourth quarter, up from 1.3 million customers the previous quarter. Overall, the traditional cable providers lost almost 15,900 customers every day during the quarter.

1Q 2022 Change Change
Comcast 17,664,000 (512,000) -2.8%
Charter 15,721,000 (112,000) -0.7%
DirecTV 14,300,000 (300,000) -2.1%
Dish Network 7,993,000 (228,000) -2.8%
Verizon 3,566,000 (78,000) -2.1%
Cox 3,310,000 (80,000) -2.4%
Altice 2,658,700 (73,600) -2.7%
Mediacom 555,000 (17,000) -3.0%
Frontier 363,000 (17,000) -4.5%
Breezeline 339,021 (7,708) -2.2%
Cable ONE 238,000 (23,000) -8.8%
   Total 66,707,721 (1,448,308) -2.1%
Hulu Live 4,100,000 (200,000) -4.7%
Sling TV 2,252,000 (234,000) -9.4%
FuboTV 1,056,245 (73,562) -6.5%
Total Cable 40,485,721 (825,308) -2.0%
Total Telco / Satellite 26,222,000 (623,000) -2.3%
Total vMvPD 7,408,245 (507,562) -6.4%

It doesn’t look like people are replacing traditional cable with an online alternative like Hulu and Sling TV – which are also losing customers. A few major online alternatives like YouTube TV aren’t on the list, but the loss in traditional cable far surpasses any net gain for the online cable alternatives.

Charter is still losing customers at a slower rate than everybody else in the industry and has for the past several years. Charter CEO Tom Rutledge explains this by Charter’s willingness to move cable subscribers to less expensive tiers, such as the $44.99 Spectrum TV Select product. He says that Charter actively points out to customers that the online alternatives cost more. The rest of the industry seems resigned to letting cable customers go.

This drops the overall penetration rate of traditional TV to just above 51% of households. The industry has lost over fifteen million customers since the end of 2017 when traditional cable was in over 73% of homes.

One of the consequences of the rapid drop in cable customers is that cable companies are losing the power of the bundle. The traditional cable industry has lost almost one-third of all cable customers since 2017, greatly reducing opportunities to retain customers with bundling discounts.

Traditional Cable Dives in 2021

Leichtman Research Group recently released the cable customer counts for the largest providers of traditional cable service at the end of the fourth quarter of 2021. LRG compiles most of these numbers from the statistics provided to stockholders other than for Cox, which is privately held and estimated. Leichtman says this group of companies represents 96% of all U.S. cable customers.

The industry continues to bleed customers, losing over 1.3 million customers in the fourth quarter. This follows similar losses in the second and third quarters and a drop of over 1.6 million customers in the first quarter of 2021. Overall, the traditional cable providers list almost 5.6 million customers for the year or a loss of 15,300 customers every day during the year.

Annual Annual 4Q 4Q
4Q 2021 Change Change Change Change
Comcast 18,176,000 (1,670,000) -8.4% (373,000) -2.0%
Charter 15,833,000 (367,000) -2.3% (58,000) -0.4%
AT&T / DirecTV 14,600,000 (1,905,000) -11.5% (400,000) -2.7%
Dish Network 8,221,000 (595,000) -6.7% (203,000) -2.4%
Verizon 3,644,000 (283,000) -7.2% (70,000) -1.9%
Cox 3,390,000 (260,000) -7.1% (70,000) -2.0%
Altice 2,732,300 (240,900) -8.1% (70,700) -2.5%
Mediacom 572,000 (71,000) -11.0% (18,000) -3.1%
Frontier 380,000 (105,000) -21.6% (20,000) -5.0%
Atlantic Broadband 346,729 (36,271) -9.5% (13,271) -3.7%
Cable ONE 261,000 (50,000) -16.1% (18,000) -6.5%
   Total 68,156,029 (5,583,171) -7.6% (1,313,971) -1.9%
Hulu Live 4,300,000 300,000 7.5% 300,000 7.5%
Sling TV 2,486,000 12,000 0.5% (70,000) -2.7%
FuboTV 1,129,807 581,927 106.2% 185,202 19.6%
Total Cable 41,311,029 (2,695,171) -6.1% (620,971) -1.5%
Total Telco / Satellite 26,845,000 (2,888,000) -9.7% (693,000) -2.5%
Total vMvPD 7,915,807 893,927 12.7% 415,202 5.5%

It doesn’t look like people are replacing traditional cable with an online alternative like Hulu and Sling TV. A few major online alternatives like YouTube TV aren’t on the list, but the loss in traditional cable far surpasses the net gain for the online cable alternatives.

Charter is losing customers at a far slower rate than everybody else in the industry and has for the past several years. Charter CEO Tom Rutledge explains this by Charter’s willingness to move cable subscribers to less expensive tiers, such as the $44.99 Spectrum TV Select product. He says that Charter actively points out to customers that the online alternatives cost more. The rest of the industry seems resigned to letting cable customers go.