UScellular grapples with cable's rise in wireless

The good news is UScellular ended 2023 with 114,000 fixed wireless access (FWA) customers. The bad news? The company lost about 53,000 postpaid phone customers, exacerbating a string of previous losses. Besides competing with the Big 3 mobile carriers, UScellular, a regional wireless carrier, is grappling with the rise of cable companies in wireless. “The thing that has driven the slowdown in gross adds is a pretty simple equation and it’s been the expansion and rise of the cable wireless players,” UScellular President and CEO Laurent Therivel said. A few years ago, cable had essentially zero market share in UScellular’s markets. It now sees cable competing in about two-thirds of its footprint. And while the wireless market share of the cable companies—led by Comcast and Charter Communications—is still only about 3 to 4 percent, their share of the gross adds is a lot larger.