5G home internet will surge in 2023 as cable and phone-based broadband stagnates

What will 5G bring to ordinary people? It will force them to fire their cable providers.

This shows that in 2023, 5G home internet service (also known as fixed wireless) from carriers like T-Mobile and Verizon will boom at the expense of traditional cable and phone-based connections, according to Leichtman Research Group This is the conclusion drawn from the statistics.

T-Mobile had the biggest increase in direct numbers, adding 2.13 million fixed wireless customers for a total of 4.78 million. But Verizon more than doubled its total number of existing fixed wireless subscribers, adding 1.54 million to bring it to 3.07 million (wired broadband accounts for another 7.65 million) .

Meanwhile, the top cable providers surveyed by LRG lost a combined 63,000 subscribers. Altice USA, which does business as Optimum, lost 114,000 jobs and fell behind T-Mobile in broadband customers at 4.52 million. Comcast’s Xfinity followed, losing 66,000 subscribers but remaining the nation’s largest broadband provider with a total of 32.25 million subscribers. The second-largest charter, Spectrum, reported that its broadband subscribers increased by 155,000, ending 2023 with 30.59 million subscribers.

A total of 80,000 subscribers have been lost among the top phone-based carriers, obscuring the continued popularity of fiber broadband. According to LRG research, these companies had a net increase of approximately 1.97 million fiber subscribers, erased by his 2.05 million who dropped non-fiber connections from these providers.

Lumen (formerly CenturyLink) fared even worse with a loss of 279,000 subscribers, followed by AT&T (the third largest ISP with 15.29 million customers), which lost 98,000 subscribers. Verizon, on the other hand, recorded a net increase of 166,000. Many, but not all, of these closed accounts were DSL, an older, slower wired service provided over copper phone lines. Leichtman noted in his email that most of AT&T’s wireline losses are related to people leaving the hybrid fiber and copper service, once sold as U-Verse.

LRG derives these numbers from company filings and supplements them with Leichtman estimates for private companies such as cable operators Cox and Mediacom.

The appeal of fixed wireless services over established rivals goes beyond lower rates. These services don’t have cable provider-specific data limits (although T-Mobile allows them to deprioritize their busiest users), and the FCC models pricing details to ISPs. There are also no detailed charges that I requested to be published in a standardized format. nutrition label.

LRG has seen a dramatic escalation in FWA growth since 2021, with fixed wireless accounting for 20% of net broadband growth, followed by 90% of net broadband growth in 2022, according to its release notes. %, accounting for 104% of the net increase in 2023. And AT&T’s latest quarterly report shows that last year’s totals are slightly less realistic than the 67,000 new subscribers to its Internet Air wireless service, which was stated in a press release at the time. You’re underestimating it.

But another category of wired broadband, satellite, didn’t feature at all in Thursday’s report. “Unfortunately, we don’t have the trend data we need for satellite broadband,” Leichtman said.

SpaceX’s Starlink, in particular, provided minimal details about its U.S. customer base until a December FCC filing mentioned “more than 1.3 million” subscribers. Some of those people may have left an older, slower, capacity-constrained satellite service (HughesNet, owned by EchoStar). HughesNet reported last week that its subscribers in 2023 will drop by 224,000, to a total of just 1 million.