Cable One and Altice say the end of the affordable connectivity program isn't having a big effect so far on subscriber numbers. The companies announced their Q2 results Thursday. Charter Communications last week said it took a notable subscriber hit from ACP, which ended in June. Also, last week, Comcast said it expects an ACP-related impact in Q3 (see 2407260006). WideOpenWest reports Q2 results Aug. 8. With Cable One ending Q2 with 963,000 residential internet primary service units, up from 960,100 in Q2 a year ago, it's the only publicly traded cable operator with positive year over year subscriber growth, MoffettNathanson's Craig Moffett wrote investors. In a call with Wall Street last week as Altice announced Q2 results, CEO Dennis Mathew said ACP's demise spurred "nominal" increased churn. The company said it lost 51,000 broadband subs in Q2, in part due to competition as well as ACP. Altice ended Q2 with 4.1 million residential broadband PSUs, down more than 130,000 from the same quarter a year earlier. Cable One said that of its 48,000 ACP subscribers, 4,000 left in Q2. While 91% were retained at least through Q2, CEO Julie Laulis said future churn is possible. Moreover, she said the company faces "steadily increased" wireline competition. Asked about the possibility of a wireless offering, Laulis was noncommittal and said Cable One models a mobile virtual network operator partnership multiple times a year. Cable One CFO Todd Koetje said the company's network is 42% by fiber operators, but that the pace of overbuilding could start slowing due to the increased cost of capital. Altice ended the quarter with 385,000 mobile lines, up from 264,000 year over year. CFO Marc Sirota said mobile line additions in the quarter were more than double the pace of what they were Q2 a year ago, and he expects accelerated mobile growth in the second half of the year. Moffett wrote Altice "might actually be better positioned" than other cable operators in wireline/wireless convergence because it has a big opportunity to offload wireless traffic in its legacy Cablevision footprint in the East onto its own network.

Charter Communications "is glad to have resolved these issues" around its reporting of network outages, the company emailed us Monday evening. Charter agreed to a $15 million penalty related to outage reporting (see 2407290043). Its February 2023 outage was due to a denial-of-service attack, according to the consent decree. Charter said the FCC consent decree identified no flaws in Charter's cybersecurity practices. The company said it "agreed with the FCC that we should continue doing what we’re already doing.” In the consent decree, the FCC Enforcement Bureau said Charter "established and shall continue to maintain and evolve its overall cybersecurity risk management program" in accordance with the voluntary cybersecurity framework in the National Institute of Standards and Technology Cyber Security Framework as well as through other industry standards and best practices.

Charter Communications has agreed it will pay $15 million for failing to notify public safety answering points about a trio of network outages in early 2023 that affected 911 service, the FCC Enforcement Bureau said Monday. The bureau said Charter also acknowledged it didn't meet other network outage reporting system (NORS) deadlines tied to numerous planned maintenance outages. In addition, it said Charter didn't notify more than 1,000 PSAPs about a Feb. 19 outage and didn't meet NORS reporting deadlines tied to that outage and to March 31 and April 26 outages. Charter didn't comment.

Lance West, former chief of staff to Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., will head Comcast's Washington office, the cable company said Monday as it announced hiring West as executive vice president-federal government affairs starting Sept. 3. West most recently was American Petroleum Institute's vice president-federal government relations, overseeing its federal lobbying. Prior to that, he spent more than three years with Manchin. Previous Executive Vice President-Government Affairs Mitch Rose retired in May.

Peacock subscribers and revenue were up year over year for Comcast, the company said Tuesday as it announced Q2 financial results. It said Peacock revenue rose $280 million, to $1 billion, with a year-over-year jump of more than 12 million paid subscribers getting much of the credit. Peacock has 33 million paid subscribers. President Mike Cavanagh said he expected Peacock growth this year to offset declines in the company's linear business, confirming it could break even by this time next year. Cavanagh said Comcast is expecting an 11-year rights deal with the NBA, beginning with the 2025-2026 season. He said the agreement includes regular season and some playoff games both on NBC and Peacock and an array of regular-season and post-season games exclusively on Peacock.

Charter Communications' 2023 carriage deal with Disney that includes access to Disney+ (see 2309110034) may not fix the declining linear cable bundle as many thought it would, Lightshed Partners said this week. Indications that few Charter cable subscribers are activating their free Disney+ accounts point to a problem with the linear cable bundle -- the bundle is bloated, LightShed said. An even-bigger bundle that now includes streaming and is increasingly expensive appears to be driving yet more cord-cutting rather than making the bundle more compelling or sticky, it said. Focusing on lower affiliate fees and far lower minimum distribution packaging requirements may be a better route for multichannel video programming distributors, it said. Those would let MVPDs offer smaller and cheaper video packages, with subscribers able to add on whatever streaming apps they want, it said.

The FCC shouldn’t directly or indirectly ban bulk broadband billing agreements, ACA Connects said during a call with an aide to Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, according to an ex parte filing posted in docket 17-142. A ban would lead to rate increases for residents in multiple tenant environments, ACA said. In addition, it would prompt worse services for MTEs, the group said. MTE owners could evade FCC rules by building internal networks and charging tenants without the right to opt out, the filing said. “These networks -- unlike those of ACA Connects’ members providing bulk services -- would tend to lock in current technology and capacity limits because an MTE owner serving its own tenants would not be subject to the same competitive forces as a broadband provider.” The FCC should “proceed cautiously” and shift from a proposed Further NPRM on bulk billing to a notice of inquiry, ACA said: “We are confident that such an inquiry would provide additional support for the Commission to refrain from intervening to regulate bulk billing arrangements.”

The Q1 2024 inflation adjustment figure for cable operators using Form 1240 is 3.05%, said the FCC Media Bureau and Office of Economics and Analytics in Tuesday's Daily Digest. In the year-ago quarter, it was 4.14%.

Comments are due June 28, replies July 5, on a Warner Bros. Discovery petition seeking a waiver from the FCC requirement that its TBS and TNT networks provide a certain amount of audio-described programming per quarter. The requested waiver would run July 1, 2024, through June 30, 2027, and cover multichannel video programming distributors carrying the WBD networks, according to a public notice Friday.

Banning early-termination fees (ETF) and requiring prorated refunds would hurt consumers, but should the FCC go that route, it should ban only "unjust or unreasonable" whole-month billing, NCTA and cable operators said Thursday in docket 23-405. Recapping a meeting with Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel's office and Media Bureau Chief Holly Sauer, the cablers said that approach would "preserve the benefits of reasonable ETFs" and protect consumers from excessively high ETFs. Reasonable ETFs would be transparently disclosed, or cable companies could grant a grace period, letting consumers cancel video service without incurring a fee, they said. Moreover, the record would need further development before supporting extending ETF rules to bundled services, they added. Representatives of Comcast, Charter Communications and Cox Enterprises also met with the FCC on these items. In December, FCC commissioners 3-2 approved a video service fees NPRM that proposes banning ETFs and requiring prorated refunds when service is canceled (see 2312130019).