Ookla’s assessment of cable MVNOs concludes that Xfinity and Spectrum customers have seen a 100-Mbps speed boost over the past two years
Cellular customers of cable MVNOs Xfinity Mobile and Spectrum Mobile have seen a 100 Mbps boost in their experienced download speeds over the past two years, Ookla says, as a result of the two cable companies’ efforts to leverage Wi-Fi as part of their mobile strategy.
The testing and analysis company said in a blog post that both Comcast (Xfinity) and Charter Communications (Spectrum) have augmented their respective MVNO services by tapping into the extensive network of Wi-Fi hotspots that both the cable companies have—including in mobile users’ own homes. And in 2023, Ookla noted, the two companies began offering access across to their combined Wi-Fi footprints to each others’ customers.
Both of the cable MVNOs are hosted on the Verizon network—so one would think that their services would see pretty close parity. But Wi-Fi is the differentiator. Comcast says that it operates a network of more than 23 million Wi-Fi hotspots in its service footprint, and Charter claims access to about 25 million, between its own and those of partners in its service area. The two companies both say that they provide nearly-nationwide coverage by population.
By leveraging those Wi-Fi networks for offload, the two cable MVNOs are able to offer faster speeds to their mobile customers. Ookla found that based on analysis of the last eight quarters of data, Spectrum Mobile customers “saw their median download speeds increase by more than double from 84.35 Mbps to 188.63 Mbps – a 104.28 Mbps increase.”
Meanwhile, Ookla said, “Xfinity Mobile users, comparing year-on-year Q4 2023 to Q4 2024, saw their download speeds increase more than 2.5 times from 66.60 Mbps to 170.39 Mbps.”
Ookla highlighted three aspects that are contributing to the improved performance for Spectrum and Xfinity customers:
–Specific service offerings aimed at boosting mobile speeds via Wi-Fi. Comcast began using gig-speed Wi-Fi hotspots to boost its mobile users’ experience in early 2024, calling it “WiFi Boost” and Charter followed soon after with “Speed Boost.” Ookla analyzed data from the two services, as seen in the chart below.
-The underlying Verizon network speeds are increasing as well. This means that MVNO mobile customers are also seeing faster speeds on the cellular network—but the Wi-Fi layer builds on top of the cellular-only experience.
–New adoption means customers are using newer, more capable equipment. As cable MVNOs see high growth in mobile customers, that means MVNO customers are more likely to have the latest Wi-Fi equipment as well as new smartphones that can take advantage of high-speed connections.
“These steps by Charter and Comcast to converge the mobile and Wi-Fi networks are meaningfully boosting their customer experience,” Ookla said, resulting in an “an impressive upward trajectory” in the network performance that Xfinity Mobile and Spectrum Mobile customers experience.
Read more of the details from Ookla here.
