- Charter and Comcast struck an MVNO agreement with T-Mobile for business wireless service
- Verizon is notably not part of the deal, which jeopardizes its existing MVNO contract with the cable providers
- Charter and Comcast stand to increase their wireless enterprise business
Charter and Comcast are eyeing bigger business customer growth for their wireless offerings. And they won’t be riding Verizon’s network to do it.
The companies Tuesday struck a new MVNO deal with T-Mobile, which will see the cable giants offer “wholesale mobile connectivity” starting in 2026. Details were scant on what kinds of plans Charter and Comcast will offer and how much they’ll cost, but the partnership jeopardizes the providers’ existing MVNO contract with Verizon, analysts said.
“This MVNO was Verizon’s to lose,” wrote New Street Research’s Jonathan Chaplin in a note to investors. “Losing it puts the existing MVNO in question.”
Both Charter and Comcast currently use Verizon’s 5G network to provide residential wireless services, and the companies said they’ll continue to do so. The question is for how long, as renewal negotiations are likely to start soon, if they haven’t already, Chaplin said.
“This agreement may serve as a timely reminder to Verizon that the cable companies do potentially have other options,” said the analysts at BNP Paribas.
The cable operators have good reason to look elsewhere if they want to chase the enterprise wireless market. Per New Street’s estimates, Comcast and Charter can currently offer around 10-12 mobile lines to customers, effectively limiting them to the small and medium business (SMB) segment.
“We suspect Verizon wanted to protect their dominant market share in mobile amongst enterprises,” Chaplin said.
Charter now has approximately 10.4 million wireless subscribers compared to Comcast’s 8.1 million. However, only 334,000 of Charter’s mobile customers are SMBs, BNP Paribas noted. Comcast doesn’t break down consumer and business metrics for its MVNO.
It’s no secret cable operators, especially Comcast, are grappling with declining broadband subscribers. Understandably, they’ve been trying to recoup with convergence, bundling broadband with mobile services.
Now, the door is open for the companies to increase their enterprise business, which could potentially “threaten Verizon’s share in mobile” and make the cable industry a more formidable competitor in fixed services, Chaplin said.
For T-Mobile, the Charter/Comcast twofer is a small part of the carrier’s MVNO business. Altice USA is one notable operator that’s using T-Mobile’s network for wireless, plus T-Mobile owns the Ryan Reynolds-associated Mint Mobile and Ultra Mobile MVNOs.
The exact number of T-Mobile’s MVNO agreements is unknown, but a press release from last year indicates the company “powers more than 200 MVNO brands” and that it’s been providing wireless services to MVNOS for more than two decades.
With Charter and Comcast in the books, T-Mobile could in turn see its own enterprise market share grow. T-Mobile has said it wants to increase wireless enterprise penetration from 10 to 20%, Chaplin said.
“By allowing Charter and Comcast to resell their wireless services to businesses, T-Mobile effectively gains exposure to a large portion of the business market that they have so far struggled to tap into,” he said.
