- Charter CEO Chris Winfrey shared some positive remarks about satellite broadband’s potential in rural areas
- The operator has already deployed a lot of fiber through RDOF, but it’s less enthusiastic about BEAD
- Despite the challenges in 2024, Winfrey remains optimistic about the future of cable
Low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite is poised to play a bigger role in the broadband landscape come 2025, and Charter seems to be all for it.
At an investor conference Tuesday, Charter CEO Chris Winfrey said although satellite broadband is even more “capacity constrained” than fixed wireless access, he acknowledged it could provide “decent service” in rural areas.
“In a low-density environment, that capacity can be spread over a number of different homes just fine,” he said at the UBS Global Media & Communications conference.
Deploying satellite broadband makes sense if there’s not much financial incentive for operators like Charter to come into those markets. Charter is currently building at around “10 homes per mile” in its subsidized rural footprint, said Winfrey.
If it wanted to deploy broadband in areas with even fewer homes per mile, that would be “very difficult” because of the high cost per passing and operating costs in such remote locations.
“Pole rent, property tax, all the stuff that adds in; so those areas probably are better served by low-earth orbit satellite,” he said.
Mobile Experts principal Joe Madden recently told Fierce a provider like Starlink could handle “millions of customers” in rural areas so long as the users are “spread evenly.” And interestingly, a Recon Analytics study found Starlink subscribers reported fewer service outages than cable and DSL customers.
Dialing back on BEAD
Despite being a cable operator, Charter is actually one of the biggest fiber deployers in the rural U.S. The company won $1.2 billion in Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) subsidies to expand its footprint across 24 states, and it expects to complete most of those builds by the end of 2026.
However, Charter has been less enthusiastic about pursuing BEAD funding. It intends to spend less on BEAD projects than it did for RDOF, in part because of the program’s rules concerning things like rate regulation and labor, Winfrey noted.
The way BEAD is structured now, he said Charter can only apply for funds in “a fraction” of its states because “it’s not conducive to private capital.”
“All providers face the same deployment economics,” said Recon Analytics principal Roger Entner. Charter in its expansion markets is deploying all fiber, not traditional hybrid fiber coax (HFC). It makes sense the company is taking a step back on BEAD since the program only partially offsets the deployment cost and comes with “significant restrictions.”
It’s worth noting Charter did win several BEAD grants from Louisiana, totaling around $11.7 million. All those projects will deploy end-to-end fiber.
Everything’s comin’ up cable
Charter’s cable rival Comcast delivered a dour prediction this week that its broadband subscriber losses won’t get better anytime soon. Winfrey however has a more optimistic outlook for 2025.
2024 had its fair share of challenges, like the end of the Affordable Connectivity Program and network disruption from hurricanes. Winfrey said Charter had roughly 30,000 disconnects from the storms this fall, but he expects those losses will just be temporary.
He also feels bullish about how Charter’s network upgrades are going, though they are taking longer than expected, as well as the company’s video strategy. Winfrey reminded investors that Charter is undertaking “the largest physical upgrade of the network since the 1990s.”
“When you think about it from an employer or a management perspective, this is a really unique time in cable,” he said.
