Charter Communications reported today that it added a record 615,000 mobile lines in its fourth quarter 2022. And for the full year it added over 1.7 million mobile lines.
“As of the end of 2022, we had 5.3 million total mobile lines,” said Charter CEO Christopher Winfrey on today's earnings call.
The company recently launched Spectrum One, which combines its broadband, advanced Wi-Fi and mobile products in a bundle. And Winfrey said, “Our Spectrum One converged offering helped drive our strongest quarter yet for mobile lines. The potential for mobile to be a significant driver of new internet sales is still largely untapped as we educate nonsubscribers of the Spectrum One value proposition.”
Perhaps Spectrum One really is Charter’s secret sauce because Comcast also offers a mobile product — Xfinity Mobile — and it gained 365,000 new mobile lines in Q4 2022, compared to Charter's 615,000.
Both Charter and Comcast now have about 5.3 million wireless lines each, although Comcast has offered Xfinity Mobile for five years, while Charter has offered Spectrum Mobile for four years.
The analysts at Evercore said Charter’s results showed notably improved subscriber performance, with residential broadband subscribers and mobile lines both materially better than it had estimated. “We believe all are benefiting from the company’s Spectrum One bundled offer,” wrote Evercore. “In a low churn environment, having an aggressive new customer acquisition offer makes sense to us.”
The analysts at New Street Research wrote today, “Convergence is here. If Charter’s momentum continues to build, it will add pressure for everyone to field a converged broadband + mobile offer.”
Verizon and T-Mobile already are offering mobile as well as fixed wireless access (FWA) broadband. And of course, both AT&T and Verizon offer fixed broadband in their footprints.
Of Charter’s unexpectedly high mobile adds in Q4, New Street said Charter was “driving the action that everyone else will have to respond to.”
Starting next quarter, Charter will no longer report mobile expenses separately. But in Q4 2022, it reported mobile expenses of $982 million against revenues of $876 million. In total, consolidated fourth quarter mobile revenue was up 3.5% year-over-year and up 4.5% for the full year 2022.