Is cable going the way of copper? That’s what David Barden and Vikash Hartalka, the broadband market experts at New Street Research, believe. In a sobering 140-page report issued just before the end of last year, the two Wall Street analysts argue that U.S. cable operators, like telcos with their all-but- extinct digital subscriber lines (DSL) over copper networks before them, will keep shedding broadband subscribers through at least 2030. Calling cable “the new copper,” Barden and Hartalka pin the blame largely on the steady growth of fixed wireless access (FWA), which, along with the continuing surges of fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) and low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellite, are eating into cable’s once-dominant market position in North America. “With industry growth remaining below pre- pandemic levels and FWA adds remaining strong, we don’t expect cable to grow subscribers this decade,” the analysts conclude. “Cable needs industry growth to improve and FWA adds to slow down to return to growth.” Barden and Hartalka are not the only industry analysts to offer up such grim assessments of North American cable’s broadband prospects. For instance, Brandon Nispel, an analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets, argues that “cable is permanently impaired” due to competition from FTTH and FWA. In a report also issued late last year, Nispel says he expects cablecos “to lose more broadband subs in the next three years than they did in the previous three years, and we’re concerned that our estimates, let alone consensus, are not negative enough.” Even the relatively bullish Craig Moffett, a partner at MoffettNathanson Research, doesn’t exactly gush over cable’s broadband prospects. In his market report late last year, Moffett predicts flat subscriber growth for the next couple of years, followed by possibly a tiny gain in 2028. In other words, like the all-but-obsolete telco copper lines before them, cable’s hybrid fibre/coax (HFC) networks have become passé for many broadband market observers. A look at recent sector trends shows why. Over the past few years, U.S. cable operators have lost a staggering number of data customers to their various broadband rivals. In 2024, the five biggest
Letter from the Americas In a new regular column, industry journalist Alan Breznick reports on the evolving broadband, telecoms and technology landscape in the Americas
BY Alan Breznick North American Correspondent
North American Cable Grapples with Broadband Future
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MAY 2026 Volume 48 No.2
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