Cable Wireless Subscribership Continues to Grow

During the first quarter of 2020, Comcast's Xfinity Mobile added 216,000 new wireless subscribers for a total of nearly 2.3 million. Charter Communications' Spectrum Mobile added 290,000 new subscribers for 1.4 million total. Those increases in subscribers compared to early 2019 provide further evidence of the competitiveness of cable hybrid Wi-Fi/Cellular mobile wireless services. Unlike mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) that are pure resellers of services provided through facilities-based cellular wireless providers, Comcast and Charter use their own facilities to transmit offloaded voice and data traffic. The continuing growth of these cable hybrid Wi-Fi/Cellular mobile services is worth watching here in 2020.