UPDATE 11/1: Shortly after this news went live, Fierce Telecom reported that Charter is increasing its standard pricing by $5. This was not noted in the email we received from a Charter publicist yesterday.
The price increase means Charter's 300Mbps tier jumps to $79.99 per month, the 500Mbps tier is $99.99 per month, and the 1Gbps tier is $119.99 per month.
Original Story 10/31:
The second-biggest cable operator in the US is stepping up its side hustle of wireless service. Charter Communications today announced a new Spectrum One bundle that combines its traditional residential broadband with Spectrum Mobile, its Verizon-based wireless service.
Prices start at $49.99 a month—”with no contracts and no added taxes or fees,” the Charter press release notes—for broadband with 300Mbps downloads and 10Mbps uploads, Spectrum’s $5/month “Advanced WiFi,” and Spectrum Mobile’s “Unlimited” data plan (we use quotes because a line of fine print warns of “reduced speeds” after 20GB of data).
At Spectrum’s normal promotional rate, that bundle of services would run $84.98: $49.99 for the broadband, $5 for the Wi-Fi, and $29.99 for the mobile line. The Spectrum One page, however, says that “standard rates” apply after the first year. It did not specify them even when we went all the way through an order to the checkout page, but a separate rate-card page lists $74.99 for the 300Mbps tier at a Manhattan address.
(Memo to Spectrum: People resent exploding prices, and not disclosing the real rates upfront will not make people resent them less. Besides, the FCC’s upcoming broadband-label rules will almost certainly compel this disclosure.)
Mobile has become an increasingly big part of Charter’s business while TV has continued its slow decline. While Charter’s third-quarter results, released Friday, showed 28.3 million residential broadband accounts, 14.6 million residential video accounts, and 4.5 million mobile accounts, mobile was the only category to show substantial growth—jumping 46% compared to Q3 2021. Broadband subscriptions inched up by just 1.3% year over year while video subscriptions dropped by 4.2%.
In March, Charter CEO Tom Rutledge told attendees at Morgan Stanley’s Technology, Media & Telecom Conference that he saw wireless, not TV, as the new counterpart to its core residential broadband business.
Spectrum Mobile, which augments its resold Verizon bandwidth with Charter’s network of hotspots, has also proved popular with customers. PCMag readers gave it a score of 8.8 out of 10, good for third place in our Readers’ Choice Awards this year after two other resellers, Mint Mobile (9.0) and Consumer Cellular (8.9).