- The companies that sell you internet access — think Comcast or Charter — want to sell you phone service, too.
- And guess what the phone guys want to sell you? Yup: internet access.
- This is good for you because you get more choice. Is it good for the cable and phone guys?
Most of you get your broadband from one company — probably from what used to be called a cable company. And most of you get your mobile phone service from a different company — probably from what many of you still call a phone company.
Guess who would like to change that?
Time's up! The answer: The cable guys want to become your phone company. And the phone companies want to become your broadband companies.
This is good news for consumers, who traditionally haven't had much choice when it comes to wireless providers, and even less choice when it comes to broadband.
Is it good for the broadband and wireless companies? We don't know yet. But we do know they are beating each other up, quite a bit.
Background: For the past few years, broadband companies — think Charter or Comcast — have been trying to sell their customers mobile phone service as well. (Both Charter and Comcast are essentially selling rebranded access to Verizon's mobile networks.) And at the same time, the phone guys like T-Mobile and AT&T have been trying to sell their customers broadband service, through what's called "fixed wireless" — internet service that gets beamed into your house via a box you put in your window, instead of cables buried in the ground.
You can understand the logic behind both pushes: For starters, it offers both industries the possibility of new revenue streams as organic growth stalls. There's also the thought that customers who get both broadband and wireless from the same provider are less likely to churn out.
It's also happening as most of — but not all — the cable guys have become less interested in selling you what used to be called cable TV, because that business is eroding every day. Meanwhile, the telcos, which have taken stabs at becoming video/content companies — see AT&T's brief ownership of what's now called Warner Bros. Discovery, and Verizon's brief ownership of AOL and Yahoo — have decided they don't want to be in those businesses, either.
Meanwhile, both industries are growing at the expense of each other. Analysts at MoffettNathanson say the mobile industry has signed up 12.7 million fixed wireless subscribers as of the end of Q1 2025 — up from 11.8 million 3 months earlier. During the same time period, the cable companies have grown from 18.2 million phone subscribers to 19 million.
And if you want to see what that means for a particular company, check out Q1 earnings reports from Comcast and Charter — the two biggest cable/broadband companies in the country this week. Both reported declining numbers of broadband subscribers, and boosts in their wireless subs.
