Charter Communications saw its cable TV business erode further during the second financial quarter of the year, with the company reporting a loss of 200,000 residential and business subscribers in its Spectrum TV business.
The figure includes a loss of 189,000 residential customers and 11,000 small- and medium business (SMB) customers, with Spectrum TV ending the quarter with just over 14.7 million cable TV subscribers.
Spectrum TV accounted for $4.188 billion of in revenue earned during the three-month period that ended June 30, a 6.6 percent decline compared to Q2 2022. Overall, Charter said it earned $13.659 in total revenue, a 0.5 percent annual increase, spurred by an uptake in broadband Internet and Spectrum Mobile wireless service.
Charter ended Q2 with more than 28.5 million residential broadband customer accounts and over 2 million SMB broadband relationships, bringing the total number of Internet customers to over 30.5 million, an annual increase of 1.1 percent.
Charter’s Spectrum Mobile business grew 54.8 percent over the last 12 months, with the company reporting 6.41 million active residential wireless lines and 216,000 SMB wireless lines. Charter leases 4G LTE and 5G network connections from Verizon to power Spectrum Mobile, which can be bundled with Spectrum Internet and other Charter products.
Broadband internet brought in $5.733 billion during the quarter, a 3.1 percent jump compared to last year, while Spectrum Mobile grabbed $539 million during Q2.
“We are growing our business by providing differentiated and valuable products, and high-quality service to our customers,” Chris Winfrey, the president and CEO of Charter, said in a statement. “We are also executing well on our evolution and expansion initiatives, and these strategic investments will lead to further customer and financial growth, creating long-term value for Charter shareholders.”
Part of that strategy includes continuing to build out its fiber-based footprint across the Spectrum service area. One way Charter wants to differentiate itself is to provide next-generation, high-speed Internet with 25 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) download speeds as soon as 2024, according to investor materials released on Friday.
Charter did not indicate where it will offer 25 Gbps connectivity or how much it will cost, though materials released by the company seemed to suggest the high-speed tier will be offered to residential and business customers alike.
In the meantime, Charter continues to focus on building out its Gig-based Internet offering. Part of its offering requires converting its existing broadband equipment to support the new DOCSIS 4.0 standard. Starting late next year, Charter intends to deploy its distributed access architecture technology that will enable better connections for customers, who could see symmetrical speeds as high as 5 Gbps.
