Charter’s business segment sees Q3 enterprise customer gains
Driven by primary service unit (PSU) growth of 5.9% year-over-year, enterprise revenue grew by 3.7% year-over-year. Excluding all wholesale income, enterprise revenue increased by 5.5%.
However, SMB revenue declined by 0.9% year-over-year.
Jessica Fischer, CFO of Charter, said the dip in SMB revenues reflects “the lower monthly SMB revenue per SMB customer, primarily due to a higher mix of lower-priced video packages and fewer voice lines per SMB customer.”
She added, “These factors were partly offset by SMB customer growth of 1.3% year-over-year.”
Broadband mobile make gains
In the SMB segment, Charter saw gains in broadband and mobile subscribers.
Third quarter, total residential and SMB Internet customers increased by 63,000. As of September 30, 2023, Charter served 30.6 million residential and SMB Internet customers.
Third quarter, total residential and SMB mobile lines increased by 594,000. As of September 30, 2023, Charter served 7.2 million mobile lines.
Navigating FWA, fiber competition
Like its cable MSO brethren, Charter is not immune from fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) and, increasingly, broadband wireless competitors.
Verizon, for one, added 384,000 fixed wireless net additions in the third quarter, an increase of 42,000 fixed wireless net additions from the third quarter of 2022.
“We continue to compete well in a portion of our footprint that is overlapped by fiber, but we also continue to see some impact from fixed wireless access competitors in the lower usage and price-sensitive customer segments of our residential and SMB businesses,” Fischer said. “That product remains slower and less reliable than we can deliver and will be additionally constrained as consumers demand more data.”
She added, “High data usage customers who switched to fixed wireless have a higher propensity to return to our Internet service.”
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Sean Buckley
Sean is responsible for establishing and executing the editorial strategies of Lightwave and Broadband Technology Report across their websites, email newsletters, events, and other information products.