Altice USA is now Optimum Communications, the company said Thursday as it also announced its latest quarterly earnings. Optimum said it lost 58,000 broadband subscribers in the quarter due to increasingly aggressive price offers and greater marketing spending by fiber and, especially, fixed wireless access competitors. It ended Q3 with 3.9 million residential broadband subscribers, versus 4 million in Q3 2024.

WideOpenWest has "been on a tear" when it comes to expanding its fiber network, CEO Teresa Elder said in a call with analysts Wednesday as the company announced its latest quarterly earnings. It reached 15,000 greenfield locations in the quarter and 106,000 so far this year, she said, in addition to expanding its network to 3,700 more homes in its legacy markets.

Viamedia’s long-running antitrust case against Comcast has been set for a jury trial on Oct. 5, 2026, said a docket entry in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois (1:16-CV-05486). Viamedia has been pursuing litigation against Comcast over its control of cable TV advertising interconnects (see 2002260020) since 2016. The case is proceeding to trial after the court denied Comcast’s motion for summary judgment Oct. 14. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court’s dismissal of the case in 2020, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up a Comcast appeal of that ruling in 2021. Viamedia is seeking up to $387 million in damages and an injunction forcing Comcast to give it interconnect access.

WideOpenWest shareholders will vote Dec. 3 on its proposed acquisition by Digital Bridge and Crestview Partners, according to the cable company's proxy statement filed Monday with the SEC. The $1.5 billion deal was announced in August and is expected to close by early 2026 (see 2508120031). The transaction needs FCC approval, the proxy statement said.

Noting its 28-page economic analysis, the International Center for Law & Economics told the FCC that Charter Communications' $34.5 billion purchase of Cox Communications is "pro-competitive." The proposed deal, announced in May (see 2505160060), is "a geographic expansion, not a horizontal consolidation of competitors." The two carriers have almost no footprint overlap, with fewer than 0.1% of their combined broadband serviceable locations served by both companies, the group said in a filing posted Wednesday (docket 25-233). Rather than reducing the number of options available to consumers in local markets, the deal instead lets New Charter reach the scale it needs to better compete against larger national broadband providers and vertically integrated tech platforms, it argued.

Vyve Broadband has expanded its 2.3 Gbps internet service into additional markets around its 16-state footprint, it said Monday. More than 45% of homes passed now have access to multi-gig speeds, the company added.

Cord-cutting will see the most widely distributed cable networks, like C-SPAN and Food Network, lose 15 million to 20 million subscribers by 2029, S&P Global said in an analysis Friday. The average cable network will likely lose subscribers at an average annual rate of 5.4%, it said, with numbers dropping from 29.8 million this year to 23.8 million in 2029. It noted that only six cable networks grew year-end subscriber numbers between 2023 and 2024. Basic cable networks in the U.S. averaged a 7.1% decline in subscribers last year, marking the ninth consecutive year of declining subscribers for the industry due to cord-cutting, S&P added.

Comments are due Oct. 6, replies Oct. 21, about the transfer of various Cox Communications licenses and authorizations to Charter Communications as part of Charter's proposed $34.5 billion purchase of Cox (see 2505160060), the FCC Wireline Bureau said Friday (docket 25-233).

WideOpenWest said Thursday that its greenfield market fiber buildout has now passed 100,000 homes. That puts it a quarter of the way to its goal, announced in 2022, of passing 400,000 homes with fiber in untapped markets in coming years, it said.

Illinois' Casscomm said last week it's boosting broadband speeds at no additional cost. It said its 75 Mbps symmetrical Essential package is going to 100 Mbps symmetrical, and its 300 Mbps symmetrical Stream package is moving up to 500 Mbps symmetrical, effective this week. It has also launched an Ultra package of 2 Gbps symmetrical.