Charter Communications saw its customer numbers impacted by the loss of the federal Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) during the second quarter, with more losses anticipated for the third quarter of this year.
Charter’s total residential and small and medium business (SMB) Internet customers dropped by 149,000 during the second quarter. Charter President and CEO Chris Winfrey said that this was mostly driven by the end of the ACP and estimated that at least 100,000 of those losses were ACP-related. “We put a lot of effort into the ACP program, and it wasn’t renewed,” he added. Charter, he went on, has been working on retaining ACP customers since early this year and has “retained the vast majority of ACP customers so far” by offering other low-cost plan options as well as a free mobile line for one year for ACP customers.
“The real question is customers’ ability to pay, not just now, but over time,” Winfrey reflected, saying that he also expects that the absence of the federal program “will also drive higher levels of market churn and selling opportunities for connectivity services over time.”
The loss of the ACP also helped to drive Charter’s mobile-only broadband segment—customers whose only internet service is via their mobile device—back to pre-pandemic levels.
On the bright side, Charter’s Spectrum mobile business saw residential and SMB lines jump by 557,000 to reach a customer base of 8.8 million mobile customers.
Charter’s second-quarter revenues were $13.7 billion, growing just slightly at 0.2% year-over-year. Residential mobile service revenues, however, saw a year-over-year growth rate of nearly 37%.
Charter’s net income for the second quarter of 2024 was $1.2 billion.
According to Charter execs, 87% of its mobile service traffic is delivered via its own Wi-Fi network; Winfrey also said that the company and its MVNO partner, Verizon, are continuing to expand Wi-Fi router and CBRS access point deployment. Only about 8% of Charter’s locations-passed take its internet and mobile converged offering, the company said.
Charter has also been working on its pricing and features related to mobile, Winfrey said, calling out specifically a new repair and replacement plan that costs only $5 per month, as well as a new program for buying out phone balances for mobile customers switching from other providers.
Charter saw its video customer base decline by 408,000 during the second quarter, and its wireline voice customer base shrank by 280,000.
