Cable One, Inc. is a broadband communications provider delivering exceptional service and enabling its customers to thrive and stay connected to what matters most.
The company strives to deliver an effortless experience by offering solutions that make its customers’ lives easier, and by relating to them personally as its neighbors and local business partners. Through Sparklight and the associated Cable One family of brands, the company is transforming the future of connectivity with a commitmen...
Cable One, Inc. is a broadband communications provider delivering exceptional service and enabling its customers to thrive and stay connected to what matters most.
The company strives to deliver an effortless experience by offering solutions that make its customers’ lives easier, and by relating to them personally as its neighbors and local business partners. Through Sparklight and the associated Cable One family of brands, the company is transforming the future of connectivity with a commitment to innovation, reliability and customer experience. The company’s robust infrastructure and cutting-edge technology keep its customers connected and help drive progress in education, business and everyday life. The services the company provides are critical to the development of new businesses and drives economic growth in the non-metropolitan, secondary and tertiary markets that it serves in 24 Western, Midwestern and Southern states.
As of December 31, 2024, approximately 74% of the company’s customers were located in seven states: Arizona, Idaho, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas. The company provided services to approximately 1.1 million residential and business customers out of approximately 2.8 million passings (which it previously referred to as homes passed) as of December 31, 2024. Of these customers, approximately 1,055,000 subscribed to data services, 114,000 subscribed to video services and 106,000 subscribed to voice services as of December 31, 2024.
The company generates substantially all of its revenues through three primary product lines.
The company focuses on growing its higher margin businesses, namely residential data and business data services. The company’s strategy acknowledges the industry-wide trends of declining profitability of video services and declining revenues from residential voice services.
The company’s broadband plant generally consists of a fiber-to-the-premises (‘fiber’) or hybrid fiber-coaxial (‘HFC’) network with ample unused capacity, and the company offers its data customers internet products at some of the fastest speeds available in its markets.
The company offers Sparklight TV, an internet protocol-based (‘IPTV’) video service that allows customers with the company’s Sparklight TV app to stream the company’s video channels from the cloud. This transition from linear to IPTV video service enables the company to reclaim bandwidth, freeing up network capacity to increase data speeds and capacity across the company’s network.
The company continues to experience increased competition, particularly from telephone companies; fiber, municipal and cooperative overbuilders; fixed wireless data (‘FWA’ or ‘cell phone internet’) providers; and over-the-top (‘OTT’) video providers.
The company has rolled out multi-Gigabit download data service to over 40% of its markets and offers Gigabit download data service to all of the company’s passings. The company has also deployed DOCSIS 3.1 and begun the deployment of DOCSIS 4.0, which, together with Sparklight TV, further increases the company’s network capacity and enables future growth in the company’s residential data and business data product lines.
The company is a fully integrated provider of data, video and voice services to residential and business customers across various geographic regions in the United States, with a primary focus on residential data and business data services. The company provides services that are similar to those provided by cable companies, telephone companies and fiber providers, among others. These providers, each to a varying degree, own and/or lease a network that allows them to deliver their services and distribute their signals to the homes and businesses of subscribers. In addition to building their own network backbone and/or leasing physical access to the network backbone, companies providing video services also purchase licenses to provide their subscribers with access to television channels owned by programmers and broadcasters via distribution over the network backbone. Companies providing video services also typically sell advertising on their video channels.
The company’s customers are located primarily in non-metropolitan, secondary and tertiary markets with favorable competitive dynamics in comparison to major urban centers.
Residential Data
The company has experienced significant growth in residential data customers and revenues since 2013 and it expects growth for this product line to continue over the long-term. Upgrades made in its broadband capacity, its ability to offer higher access speeds than many of the company’s competitors, the reliability and flexibility of its data service offerings, the company’s Wi-Fi offerings and continuously growing data usage by consumers and their demand for higher speeds will enable it to continue growing average monthly revenue per unit (ARPU) from the company’s existing customers over the long-term and capture additional market share. The company’s broadband plant generally consists of a fiber-to-the-premises (fiber) or hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) network with ample unused capacity, and it offers the company’s data customers internet products at some of the fastest speeds available in its markets.
Business Data
The company experienced significant growth in business data customers and revenues since 2013. The company attributes this growth to its strategic focus on increasing sales to business customers and the company efforts to attract enterprise and wholesale business customers.
Residential Video
The company intends to continue its strategy of focusing on the higher-margin businesses of residential data and business data services while de-emphasizing the company’s video business. The company offers Sparklight TV, an internet protocol-based (IPTV) video service that allows customers with its Sparklight TV app to stream the company’s video channels from the cloud. This transition from linear to IPTV video service enables it to reclaim bandwidth, freeing up network capacity to increase data speeds and capacity across the company’s network.
The company continues to experience increased competition, particularly from telephone companies; fiber, municipal and cooperative overbuilders; fixed wireless data (‘FWA’ or ‘cell phone internet’) providers; and over-the-top (OTT) video providers.
The company serves its customers through a plant and network with capacity generally measuring 750 megahertz or higher and have DOCSIS 3.1 capabilities throughout the company’s systems. The company’s technologically advanced fiber-based infrastructure provides for the delivery of a full suite of data, video, and voice products. The company’s broadband plant generally consists of a fiber or HFC network with ample unused capacity, and all its passings have access to Gigabit download speeds, including over 40% of the company’s markets that have access to multi-Gigabit download speeds, which meaningfully distinguishes the company’s offerings from certain competitors in its markets.
Strategy
The key elements of the company's strategy are to focus on non-metropolitan markets; prioritize higher growth, higher margin opportunities; and drive growth in residential data and business data services.
The company's strategy has allowed it to continually decrease customer service calls and truck rolls, while simultaneously maintaining customer satisfaction scores.
Products
Residential data services represented 58.6% of the company’s total revenues for 2024. The company offers simplified data plans with lower pricing and higher speeds across its premium tiers, with download speeds up to 1 Gbps available to all the company’s residential customers. In over 40% of its markets, the company has rolled out multi-Gigabit download service offerings with further multi-Gigabit rollouts planned in the future. The company also offers unlimited data options on most of its plans across most of the company’s markets. Further, to meet the increasing bandwidth needs of the company’s customers who use a growing number of devices in the home, it offers most of the company’s customers its advanced Wi-Fi service combining technology solutions with certified technicians, who locate and configure hardware based on individual customer needs. This service provides customers with enhanced Wi-Fi signal strength, which extends and improves the Wi-Fi signal throughout the home.
Business Data and Other Services
The company considers the data, voice and video products it provides to its business customers to be a separate product from the company’s residential versions of these services.
The company’s offerings for small businesses are provided over both its fiber and HFC networks, with all new buildouts being fiber. The company’s data services offer various options with download speeds ranging from 25 Mbps up to 2 Gbps over HFC, with varying upload speeds, along with managed Wi-Fi. The company’s small business voice solutions include hosted voice with unified communications as a service from one line to multi-line options, including the availability of popular calling features like simultaneous ring, hunt groups and selective call forwarding. Business video packages range from a basic service tier to a comprehensive selection, including variety, news and sports programming in high-definition. The company’s small- and medium-sized business customers experience up to 6 Gbps symmetrical speeds over fiber in select markets.
The company offers delivery of data and voice services using fiber technology primarily for mid-market customers. This shared fiber architecture provides for symmetrical data speeds ranging from 50 Mbps to 6 Gbps.
For enterprise and wholesale customers, the company offers dedicated bandwidth and Enterprise Wi-Fi in addition to multiple voice services via fiber optic technology. The company’s fiber optic-based products include dark fiber in addition to dedicated internet access and E-Line, E-Lan and E-Access Ethernet services. The company also offers network-to-network interface connections to other carriers at multiple points of presence across the United States. The company’s enterprise customers experience symmetrical speeds of up to 10 Gbps over fiber.
Residential Video Services
Residential video services represented 14.1% of the company’s total revenues for 2024. The company offers a broad variety of residential video services, generally ranging from a basic video service to a full digital service with access to hundreds of channels. The company offers Sparklight TV, an IPTV video service and a cloud-based digital video recorder (DVR) service that allows customers to stream its video channels from the cloud through a new app on supported devices, such as the Amazon Firestick, Apple TV and Android-based smart televisions that does not require the use of a set-top box.
Residential Voice Services
Residential voice services represented 2.0% of the company’s total revenues for 2024. The majority of the company’s residential voice service offerings transmit digital voice signals over its network and are interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services. The company also offers traditional telecommunications services through some of its subsidiaries.
Competition
The company’s video business faces substantial and increasing competition from other forms of in-home and mobile entertainment, including, among others, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, Disney+, Max, Hulu, Netflix, Paramount+, Peacock, and YouTube TV.
Regulation
Title VI of the Communications Act establishes the principal federal regulatory framework for the company’s operation of cable systems and the provision of its video services. The Communications Act allocates primary responsibility for enforcing the federal policies among the FCC and state and local governmental authorities.
The FCC regulates various other aspects of the company’s video business, including, among other things, equal employment opportunity obligations; customer service standards; technical service standards; mandatory blackouts of certain network and syndicated programming; restrictions on political advertising; restrictions on advertising in children’s programming; maintenance of public files; emergency alert systems; inside wiring and exclusive contracts for service provided to apartment and condominium complexes; and disability access, including requirements governing video-description and closed-captioning.
History
Cable One, Inc. was incorporated in 1980.