(Source: TDBP)

Comcast CFO Jason Armstrong raised some eyebrows last month when he told an investor conference that the broadband operator saw some "irrational" pricing from certain fiber service providers pop up in the second quarter of 2026, and then continue into the third quarter.

"When we see fiber pricing, standalone fiber pricing, in the $30 to $40 range for a Gig…that's what we mean by irrational. That to us is not a rational price point," he said.

Armstrong didn't identify that competition by name, but analysts and other industry observers believe AT&T was who he was talking about.

While Armstrong wasn't wrong about the pricing dynamics in the broadband market, those comments served as "the cherry on top of an already bad year for cable investors," MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett explained in a new report on broadband pricing trends (registration required). Comcast and its cable peers have been trying to reverse the trend and return to broadband subscriber growth with new pricing and packaging, including price locks, and mobile-broadband service bundles.

Data shines some light on what AT&T was doing. Moffett's report, which used data from Navi, found that AT&T had, in the earlier part of the year, been pitching 1-Gig fiber speeds for $35 per month in some of its most aggressive markets and in areas where fiber services were just being introduced in the earlier part of the year.

And it wasn't just some sort of promo that would jack up prices a year after a customer signed up. "This was not an introductory rate; there was no automatic step-up after 12 months," Moffett explained.

But it did have an effect on the market. Comcast, he noted, temporarily cut the starting price of its 1-Gig service from $65 per month to $40 per month, and others, including Verizon and Optimum Communications, also sweetened some of their offers.

Price pendulum swinging the other way

The good news – for Comcast, anyway – is that Navi's data, which is based on the collection of more than 100,000 broadband price points taken from more than 30 US cable, fiber, fixed wireless and satellite broadband operators, found that AT&T's fiber pricing has returned to a more rational level, so to speak. The price in those markets for 1-Gig, the data shows, recently rose to $40 per month for the first 12 months, but was then poised to jump to $80 per month after that period.

And that trend has continued. "As of late August, the average cost over the first three years of subscribership in both 'aggressive' and 'standard' markets was in the $60 to $65 range," Moffett said in his assessment of the data. Then, after raising prices on September 1, AT&T raised them again.

And the price pendulum is swinging the other way elsewhere. Navi's October 1 report cited price increases or a pull back on promotional pricing for several other broadband service operators, including Glo Fiber, T-Mobile and Ziply.

Eye on Spectrum

Moffett notes that Spectrum – now the brand of the recently merged Charter Communications and Cox Communications – has been an outlier amid the introduction of lower broadband pricing in Cox markets that align with Charter's legacy pricing.

"We don't expect that stasis to last," the analyst added, noting that some changes are likely in store as new Spectrum COO and former Frontier Communications CEO Nick Jeffery starts to implement his game plan. "Whether Charter's next pricing moves are higher or lower remains to be seen, however. For context, unlike Comcast and its other cable peers, Charter didn't lower prices over the summer but instead held them constant even through AT&T's most aggressive promotional period."

But expect some movement relatively soon. During his appearance at last week's SCTE TechExpo in Atlanta, Spectrum CEO Chris Winfrey said it is critical for the company to improve its go-to-market strategies with revised pricing and packaging and to, more generally, improve the operator's net promoter scores.

"We can do better," Winfrey said. "I don't think we should wait."

Price war averted?

Moffett said it's unclear if AT&T's somewhat recent aggressive pricing is some sort of short-term experiment or something it'll lean on to help drive subscription demand when it needs a lift.

Bigger picture, Moffett said it's too early to conclude that US broadband is in for a longer period of falling broadband prices. But for now, anyway, the fear of a broadband price war has been tamped down.

"There is always the chance that some of the more recent increases are simply 'normalization' after a furious end-of-quarter push to score net adds," he wrote. "It's too soon to call a definitive turn, but Navi's new Broadband Intelligence service suggests that the direction of travel is higher, a development that should be heartening to broadband investors."