2025 preview: Will cable broadband rebound or merely stabilize?2025 preview: Will cable broadband rebound or merely stabilize?

Home broadband has long succeeded pay-TV as the cornerstone of the cable industry. With respect to home broadband, cable's been in the catbird seat for years as it raked in subscribers against limited fiber-to-the-premises incursions and feeble DSL competition.

Cable has since pivoted to a broader connectivity and convergence strategy by pairing home broadband with mobile/wireless. But the broadband picture has changed amid expanding fiber network deployments and the rise of popular and less expensive fixed wireless access (FWA) options.

Cable benefited greatly from a surge in broadband subscriptions during the early phases of the pandemic, but that boost has since faded. Tied in, cable operators saw gains from the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), but the benefits were erased in mid-2024 as the program came to an end, with no imminent remedy in sight.

This confluence of factors has put much pressure on cable's bread-and-butter broadband business, causing many operators not only to struggle to gain and retain customers, but also to shed them in recent quarters.

Positive signs

However, there are already signs of a rebound as the pace of subscriber growth from FWA competition continues to slow. In the third quarter of 2024, both Comcast and Charter Communications said they would have gained broadband subscribers if not for losses linked to the now-defunct ACP. Coming Q4 2024 results will show whether that positive trend has continued.

Comcast and Charter have said they expect to eventually return to broadband subscriber growth but aren't pinpointing when that will happen. Cable's been hopeful that today's FWA subs will be tomorrow's cable broadband customers as they look for connections that can keep up with the pace of data usage.

Meanwhile, many operators are expanding their footprints through "edge-outs" of existing footprint or fiber builds in rural greenfields that are fueled by a mixture of local, regional and federal funding. But it will take time for those builds to be activated and parlayed into new subs.

While it appears that cable broadband could bounce back, at least in a limited way, in 2025, it is possible that cable broadband won't return to sustainable subscriber growth but rather will continue to stabilize with the pace of subscriber losses continuing to slow. The downward trend has continued at Comcast, which recently disclosed that it expects to lose about 100,000 broadband subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2024, attributing about 10,000 of those losses to Hurricanes Helene and Milton.

Some industry watchers don't see cable broadband rebounding fully in 2025. A recent analysis from MoffettNathanson, for example, suggests that US cable is on a path to stabilize the broadband base and generate some growth in 2026.

Another big question heading into 2025 ties to cable network upgrades and when suppliers might also see a rebound. They've struggled in 2024 due to slower cable operator spending. Suppliers started to see an uptick in spending in the second half of 2024, a trend that is expected to improve in 2025 as more cable operators solidify their hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) network plans. Dell'Oro Group recently confirmed that trend, reporting that spending on DOCSIS infrastructure rose 26% in Q3 2024 versus the year-ago period.

Here's a sampling of cable broadband headlines from the past year:

7/9/2024: Cable operators see surge in network upgrade options

9/24/2024: Comcast, Charter and Broadband take aim at 25-Gig on HFC

10/9/2024: Cable could return to broadband sub growth in 2026 – forecast

10/20/2024: Harmonic warns of spending delays as cable ops evaluate 'unified' DOCSIS 4.0

10/31/2024: Comcast would've returned to broadband sub growth without ACP impact

11/7/2024: CommScope sees hope in Comcast's FDX ramp up