Charter, Comcast outshine telco rivals in broadband reliability – Opensignal

Charter and Comcast outpace their telco rivals when it comes to fixed broadband reliability, Opensignal concluded in a new study focused on service reliability and service experience. "Fixed," in this instance, spans a blend of different access technologies, including cable/DOCSIS, fiber, DSL and fixed wireless access (FWA).

With a reliability score of 741, Charter topped all five national operators tied to the study, placing it ahead of Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile.

(Source: Opensignal)

Among other findings, Opensignal said Comcast and Charter win in all of their head-to-head matchups, while Verizon outperforms T-Mobile in locations where they have shared service areas. AT&T, meanwhile, scored better than Verizon and T-Mobile.

(Source: Opensignal)

While reliability is important, it's not necessarily a truth-teller in terms of how services are performing in the market.

Though T-Mobile's reliability scores in the study trailed the other four national service providers, it hasn't impacted the company's subscriber growth. T-Mobile, which added 406,000 FWA subs in Q2 for a total of 5.6 million, has outpaced the field in recent quarters using a platform that provides ample speed at an attractive price.

Opensignal's reliability metric is based on a scale of 100 to 1,000, with scores above 650 considered "higher reliability," followed by a range of 500-600 for "moderate reliability" and under 500 for "lower reliability." Notably, none of the five national providers scored below the 500 threshold.

Opensignal said its broadband reliability experience metric measures the "entire user experience" by focusing on tasks such as streaming video, web browsing and scrolling through social media. Its broader methodology also captures and analyzes data from two protocols: TCP (transmission control protocol) and UDP (user datagram protocol).

Opensignal, which uses a mix of proprietary crowdsourced network data and data from the FCC, noted that metric is also comprised of three primary components: connectivity (assessing whether a household can connect to the Internet); completion (measuring whether tasks can be completed); and sufficiency (whether tasks are performed sufficiently well).

Pairing speed with reliability rises in importance

The study arrives as the marketing of billboard speeds still remain important to service providers, but reliability continues to rise in importance.

Comcast, for example, is highlighting the reliability and quick troubleshooting aspects of its coming DOCSIS 4.0 platform that will incorporate AI and machine learning into multiple components of the network, including nodes, amplifiers and the customer premises equipment. More broadly, the cable industry is pursuing a set of new standards for "smart" amplifiers that also aim to boost the reliability of hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) networks.

Meanwhile, Charter has used ads to mock the speed and reliability of T-Mobile's fixed wireless access offering, with execs referring to FWA as "cellphone Internet." T-Mobile has taken issue with Charter's ads and its use of the cellphone Internet classification.

Opensignal said it will follow this national-level study with a similar one focused on the top 50 US metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs).