Jim Holanda, CEO of Cable One, told investors during its second-quarter earnings call that mobile was one of the missing pieces in its customer retention strategy. “On the retention side, we were ceding market share to FWA by not having a mobile and a bundled offering strategy,” he said. I think that set us behind. We have worked quickly to close that gap.”

While he did not reveal any specific customer numbers because it is still a small part of its core broadband operations, Holanda said customer adoption trends and the pace of growth across the platform are encouraging.

“As we've said previously, building awareness and changing customer perception takes time,” he said. “Customers have known us as a broadband provider for many years, and we expect it will take time for customers to view us as a mobile provider. Across the broadband industry, mobile is an increasingly important part of the customer relationship.”

He added that while it is still early in the wireless game, “we believe it is an effective way to improve customer acquisition, deepen customer relationships and strengthen retention over time.”

Broadband retention focus

Despite its outlook on providing a wireline broadband and wireless bundle, Cable One faced broadband challenges during the second quarter.

As elevated churn continued to pressure subscriber results, Cable One reported it lost 17,000 broadband customers.

To stem customer churn, Cable One will focus on a targeted, segmented approach to pricing and retention initiatives tailored to the competitive dynamics of each market it serves.

Holanda, however, sees an opportunity to improve broadband customer retention by offering additional features for broadband subscribers.

“These results reinforce our belief that improving customer retention is our most important operational priority,” he said. “Achieving that requires continued focus on both enhancing the customer experience and strengthening our overall value proposition. To support these efforts, we continue to augment initiatives across the business, including additional speed upgrades, more gradual promotional roll-offs, and a broader portfolio of products and services designed to deepen customer relationships and improve customer lifetime value, supported by enhanced retention tools.”

Likewise, on the customer acquisition side, Cable One improved connectivity activity from the first quarter with what Holanda said is “a more balanced acquisition approach as investments in our people, platforms and go-to-market capabilities continue to gain traction.”

“Over the past year, the contribution from door-to-door sales has more than doubled as a share of our quarterly connects, and we also continue to see encouraging momentum across our digital acquisition channels,” he said. “These results reflect our efforts to diversify how we acquire new customers and build a more balanced mix of acquisition channels.”

One of the bright spots in Cable One’s broadband results was that residential ARPU was up. “Residential broadband ARPU increased sequentially during the quarter, benefiting from promotional roll-offs, the implementation of our AutoPayPlus program changes and continued adoption of higher-value products and services across the customer relationship, partially offset by customer retention initiatives and increased adoption of value-oriented offerings,” Holanda said.

FWA competitors continue to remain aggressive.

Second-quarter results showed ongoing FWA momentum from the largest wireless operators.

Verizon added 193,000 net fixed wireless subscribers. Meanwhile, AT&T added 279,000 fixed wireless subscribers in the second quarter of 2026, reaching a milestone of 2 million total fixed wireless access (FWA) subscribers.

Finally, T-Mobile reported total broadband net additions (including fixed wireless and fiber) in the range of nearly 400,000.

Todd Koetje, CFO of Cable One, said that FWA providers overlap by “a little over 80% right now based on our third-party research and the data that we have access to, so it's a little harder to identify that on a quarter-to-quarter basis, which has moved up a little bit” since last year.

And while Cable One does see satellite service competition, the impact today remains minimal. According to data collected from OpenSignal, it is seeing 1% of satellite presence in the markets it serves.

“Satellite broadband hasn't had any materiality regarding competition,” Holanda said. “That said, we are closely tracking this across our geographies regularly as a prudent step to see whether it changes, and we'll be happy to provide updates on future quarters as well.”

Second quarter revenue challenges

Cable One reported second-quarter revenues of $348.9 million, down year over year, with a $9.7 million decrease due to a decline in residential video revenues.

The cable operator also saw challenges in residential data, with revenues of $212.6 million, down $16.7 million, or 7.3%, year over year. Residential data revenues declined $1.0 million, or 0.5%, on a sequential quarterly basis.

Todd Koetje, CFO, said the decline in residential data was “driven by a 6.6% decrease in subscribers, while ARPU remained relatively flat.”

Likewise, Cable One saw declines in its business services unit. Business data revenues for the second quarter of 2026 were $53.6 million, down $3.8 million, or 6.6%, year-over-year.

Koetje noted that “$2.2 million of this decline was attributable to the revenues associated with the tower contracts divested during the first quarter of 2026.”

From a capex perspective, Cable One reported it was up $5.6 million year over year to $74 million, or 42.7% of adjusted EBITDA.

Koetje said the capex increase resulted from new home networking platforms being rolled out as part of its customer retention effort.

“The higher capex number was primarily attributable to our investments in the latest in-home advanced Wi-Fi technologies and security solutions to drive increased customer satisfaction and related loyalty,” he said. “We reaffirm our previous guidance that full-year CapEx is expected to remain consistent with the prior year, and we will continue to remain disciplined and balanced on capital allocation priorities that are centered around the highest network reliability standards and debt reduction."

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