The End of the Internet Monopoly: Comcast and Spectrum Face the Reality of Cord Cutting 2.0

The final week of January 2026 has served as a reckoning for the two largest cable giants in the United States. Charter Communications (Spectrum) and Comcast both released their full-year 2025 earnings reports, and the numbers tell a story of an industry in a defensive crouch. The long-held belief that high-speed internet would remain a "safe haven" even as cable television collapsed is being systematically dismantled by a movement now known as Cord Cutting 2.0.

Between these two providers alone, nearly 1.5 million video subscribers and over 1.1 million internet subscribers vanished in a single year. This is no longer a slow leak; it is a structural shift in how the country connects.

The Magnitude of the Losses

The data for 2025 highlights a staggering exit from traditional wired services. While cord-cutting once referred specifically to ditching a $150 cable TV bundle for a $15 streaming app, the current phase targets the "pipe" itself.

Metric	Spectrum (Charter)	Comcast	Total Impact
TV/Video Customers Lost	284,000	1,155,000	1,439,000
Internet Customers Lost	403,000	710,000	1,113,000
Total Internet Base	29.68 Million	31.255 Million	60.935 Million

For Comcast, the loss of 710,000 internet customers is a psychological blow to a company that once faced almost zero competition in many of its primary markets. Spectrum, despite losing 403,000 internet customers, managed a slight gain of 44,000 video subscribers in the fourth quarter -- a rare anomaly in an otherwise downward trend.

The Rise of Cord Cutting 2.0

The catalyst for these losses is the emergence of viable alternatives that simply did not exist five years ago. Consumers who were once "trapped" by a single cable provider now have options that often outperform the legacy incumbents in both price and flexibility.

• 5G Home Internet and Fixed Wireless Access (FWA): T-Mobile and Verizon have successfully marketed "plug-and-play" internet that bypasses the need for a cable technician.
• Satellite Evolution: Starlink has moved from a niche rural solution to a mainstream competitor, offering speeds that rival cable in areas where infrastructure has been neglected for years.
• Fiber Overbuilders: New fiber networks are aggressively moving into established cable territories, offering symmetrical upload and download speeds that traditional copper-based cable networks struggle to match.

The Rural Monopoly and the REMC Disruptor

While the national numbers show a decline, the cable industry's last line of defense remains the "virtual monopoly" in rural and underserved areas. Outside of major metropolitan hubs and away from the primary Interstate corridors, many households still face a choice of one: the local cable company or nothing.

However, even these "protected" territories are seeing a new kind of competition. Across the country, Rural Electric Membership Cooperatives (REMCs) are increasingly stepping in to provide fiber internet to their members. Because these are member-owned utilities already possessing the poles and right-of-way, they are rolling out service that frequently outperforms Comcast and Spectrum in both speed and reliability.

While these services are currently restricted to existing utility customers, they represent a significant "edge-out" that is slowly eroding the legacy cable providers' rural floor. The decision by major providers to focus purely on "high-density" areas is beginning to haunt them as these local utilities provide a superior alternative.

A Tale of Two Financial Strategies

Despite the massive loss of subscribers, neither company is in immediate financial peril, though they are taking very different paths to stay afloat.

Comcast has successfully transitioned into a diversified global conglomerate. Their 2025 revenue remained flat, primarily because losses in the "Connectivity" (Cable) segment were subsidized by record-breaking growth in their Theme Parks and Content divisions. The massive success of Universal Destinations and the growth of Peacock have effectively masked the bleeding of the Xfinity brand.

Spectrum, by contrast, remains a "pure-play" distributor. Without a movie studio or a theme park to lean on, their 2025 revenue saw a direct decline. Their primary strategy for survival is aggressive mobile bundling. By offering "free" or heavily discounted mobile lines to existing internet customers, they are attempting to build a new kind of "sticky" bundle to prevent further internet churn.

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Sources and Further Reading

• Charter Announces Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Results (Charter Corporate Newsroom)
• Comcast Corp (CMCSA) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Highlights (GuruFocus)
• U.S. Cable Industry Bundles Up For Subscriber Losses (S&P Global)
• Cord Cutting Statistics 2026 -- Market Trends & Latest Data (Evoca TV)
• Gov. Kemp Applauds Satilla REMC and Conexon Connect for Expanding Broadband in South Georgia (Atlanta Journal-Constitution / Office of the Governor)
• TN Distributes $813M To Expand Rural Broadband Access (Tennessee Lookout)
• Governor Josh Stein Unlocks More Than $300 Million for Broadband Expansion Projects (North Carolina Department of Information Technology)
• Spectrum Lost Over 284,000 TV Customers and Over 400,000 Internet Customers in 2025 (Cord Cutters News)
• Comcast Lost 1.155 Million TV Customers & 710,000 Internet Customers in 2025 as Cord Cutting 2.0 Grows (Cord Cutters News)