Broadband Market Share Gains Likely for Altice, Charter, Comcast, Says Analyst

Altice, Charter and Comcast should have residential broadband market share gains, said Wells Fargo's Jennifer Fritzsche in a series of notes to investors Tuesday. Charter, adding such share in recent years, is expected to continue gaining from legacy telco competitors with slower speeds. The analyst expects video subscriber declines in excess of 500,000 in Charter's FY 2019 and 2020, accompanied by more customers moving into higher-speed broadband tiers. She said Altice's fiber-to-the-home strategy "should 'future-proof' its network" via higher-speed tiers and lowering future operating and capital costs: Its residential broadband revenue growth has come from pricing, and growth can likely be sustained by featuring its speed offerings in Suddenlink markets where it often competes with DSL-based telcos. Fritzsche wrote that Comcast, with roughly 26 percent of the U.S. residential broadband market, should get further gains from network and customer experience investments.