WideOpenWest completed the sale of its Chicago, Anne Arundel, Maryland, and Evansville, Indiana, service areas to Astound Broadband for $661 million, it said Monday. That deal, along with the completed sales in September of its Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio, service areas to Atlantic Broadband, gives it $1.8 billion to lower debt and invest in its broadband strategy, it said.

Cable ISPs enjoy regulatory fee favoritism from a court decision that the Cable Act preempts states and localities from levying cable regulatory fees on non-cable services provided using cable networks (see 210526003), said localities and allies in a petition for writ of certiorari filed Monday with the Supreme Court. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision is at odds with an Oregon Supreme Court ruling, and that conflict needs resolution, said the petitions, which include Eugene, Oregon; Boston; Fairfax County, Virginia; Maryland's Anne Arundel, Howard and Prince George's counties; Hawaii; and NATOA. They urged SCOTUS to provide clarity on implied preemption. The FCC and NCTA didn't comment. NATOA General Counsel Nancy Werner told us the FCC's cable local franchise authority order and the 6th Circuit's subsequent upholding of much of it complicated LFA renewal negotiations, with parties having to negotiate for different scenarios, depending on what the 6th Circuit might do. She said localities have significant concerns about how the LFA order might affect budgets, but the 6th Circuit's ruling that calculating franchise fees must be based on cable operators' marginal costs instead of market value of what's provided softened the blow. Many local franchise obligations probably have no marginal cost to cable operators, she said.

Comcast continued a 20-year run adding at least a million residential broadband subscribers a year, though its Q3 2021 adds were slower than Q3 2019, the company said Thursday announcing quarterly results. It added 281,000 residential broadband customers during the quarter, lower than the 359,000 added in Q3 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic. Comcast Cable CEO Dave Watson said growth of lower-income subscribers was slower due to wireless competition drawn by government programs like the emergency broadband benefit and lower churn across broadband providers meaning "less jump balls, where we do well." With Comcast having 1.1 million broadband adds so far this year, it still has a long runway of future connectivity growth, he said. New Street Research's Jonathan Chaplin wrote investors that the softer broadband adds weren't surprising and Wall Street consensus is a further slowdown from the pace of growth in this Q3 is likely. Comcast ended the quarter with 29.4 million residential broadband customers, up 1.6 million year over year, 17.8 million residential video customers, down 1.4 million, and 9.2 million residential voice customers, down 500,000. It has 3.7 million wireless lines, up 1.1 million. Revenue of $30.3 billion was up $4.8 billion. EO Brian Roberts said Comcast sees big potential to gain share in business services with its purchase earlier this month of software-defined networking and cloud platforms company Masergy. It said the 285,000 wireless customers added in Q3 was its best quarter since the 2017 launch of the wireless business. Roberts said the low penetration by its wireless offerings among its broadband customers means its wireless business has room to grow. MoffettNathanson's Craig Moffett wrote in a note that Comcast seems to be pointing to a slowdown in broadband growth in Q4.

U.S. households subscribing to a broadband service, but not pay TV, will reach 54 million by 2025, up from 38 million last year, TDG emailed Wednesday. With nine in 10 U.S. households expected to use residential broadband in four years, video creators and distributors have “lucrative growth opportunities,” said analyst Paul Hockenbury. TDG defines broadband-only (BBO) customers as early mainstream adopters influenced by price, benefits and available support. BBOs watch 28 hours of TV a week, about 10% less than broadband households subscribing to a legacy or over-the-top pay-TV service, he said. Sixty percent of BBO TV time is streaming video, mostly subscription VOD, said the analyst. The three most popular SVOD apps for BBO households are Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu. Two-thirds of BBOs watch free ad-supported streaming video on TV, led by YouTube at 76%; Pluto at 36%. Over 33% of BBOs use a terrestrial TV antenna and watch more than 12 hours of broadcast TV weekly.

The FCC Wireline Bureau suspended the Oct. 27 reply deadline for Mediacom's petition for FCC preemption of a conduit network arrangement between Google Fiber and West Des Moines, Iowa, (see 2110080031) while the cable ISP and municipality pursue a private resolution, per an order in Tuesday's Daily Digest.

ViacomCBS and Altice's carriage agreement includes rights to access the programmer's streaming services, ViacomCBS said Monday. It said it and Altice will continue to collaborate on addressable media and advanced advertising.

Cable and telecom stocks are hurting from growing investor sentiment telcos' expansion into fiber and cable's play in wireless will force incumbents to cut pricing amid shrinking subscriber numbers, MoffettNathanson's Craig Moffett wrote Thursday. He said telco fiber overbuilding of cable systems will go from about 30% of U.S. homes now to 55% over the next decade or so. He said Charter's new mobile service family plan makes it more competitive than any telco, and it and Comcast are competing nationally with mobile carriers. Telcos' strategy is riskier because payback on their fiber investments becomes more difficult if prices or penetration falls or if deployment costs rise, said Moffett.

ViacomCBS and nonfungible token company Recur will partner to create a platform where individuals can buy, collect and trade NFTs as digital products and collectibles across the content company's portfolio of franchises and IP, said ViacomCBS Wednesday. It said the NFT platform will launch in spring.

Regional sports network AT&T SportsNet Rocky Mountain joins fuboTV's lineup through a carriage agreement announced Tuesday. This includes Utah Jazz, Vegas Golden Knights and Colorado Rockies regional games.

Altice violated its Keep Americans Connected pledge when it shut off service to small businesses over supposed nonpayment of monthly service charges in the first half of 2020, a Bronx, New York, barbershop owner said in a suit seeking class-action status (in Pacer, docket 21-cv-05540) Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Central Islip, New York. It said Altice charging a $180 “illegal 'ransom' fee” to restart service was a violation of New York consumer protection law. Altice emailed Thursday that throughout the COVID-19 pandemic it “has been committed to providing support and relief to our customers, including providing free broadband services to students, suspending disconnections for households and businesses during the height of the pandemic as part of the 'Keep Americans Connected Pledge,' ... While we have not yet received the complaint, we will respond appropriately upon receipt.”