Fast, reliable connectivity will always be the heart of telecom, but 2025 has seen a shift — whether it’s enormous national companies or small rural cooperatives. Rather than hawking lightning-fast speeds and bargain basement prices, broadband service providers (BSPs) are increasingly touting customer service.
The first hints of a sea change came in September 2024, when Charter promised its Spectrum customers same-day service and freedom from contracts. The company reiterated its promises a year later.
In the meantime, competitors such as T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, Xfinity (Comcast), and Midco offered their own guarantees. These often came hand-in-hand with multi-year price guarantees, another strong trend in 2025.
BSPs’ focus on customer service rather than speed comes at a time of increased corporate mergers, an increase in competition from 5G providers, and a downturn in customer satisfaction ratings over time.
Mergers a Catalyst for Customer Service Improvements
What’s the best way to retain customers (and find new ones) in a merger between two telecom providers? If the press releases we saw in 2025 are to be believed, the answer is to promise a better customer experience.
The 2025 merger scene kicked off with T-Mobile purchasing fiber internet provider Lumos. The first half of the year also saw Charter’s purchase of Cox, AT&T’s purchase of Lumen’s Mass Markets fiber-to-the-home business, and several smaller deals, including Fiber Light’s acquisition of Metro Fiber Networks in Virginia, a Fibernow acquisition of WaveTechs, and a merger between Ripple Fiber and HyperFiber.
In the latter half of the year, mergers continued apace. T-Mobile teamed up with KKR to buy Metronet, Ezee Fiber purchased Tachus Fiber Internet, Greenlight Networks purchased Loop Internet in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Brightspeed purchased fiber assets from Cincinnati Communications, T-Mobile acquired U.S. Internet in Minnesota, and Verizon bought fixed wireless provider Starry.
T-Mobile’s release about its UScellular purchase was just one example of BSPs’ customer service promises.
“Today is such an exciting one because we get to officially welcome UScellular customers to Team Magenta and we’re doing it with some pretty amazing Un-carrier gifts: America’s best network, value-packed benefits, and a best-in-class experience,” said Mike Sievert, CEO of T-Mobile. “We’re improving experiences for millions of UScellular and T-Mobile customers and adding more amazing employees to the T-Mobile family to help us do it.”
The Cox-Charter merger also came with big customer promises.
“This combination will augment our ability to innovate and provide high-quality, competitively priced products, delivered with outstanding customer service, to millions of homes and businesses,” said Chris Winfrey, President and CEO of Charter, in a press release.
Wireless Home Internet Challenges Fully Wired Providers
Just as T-Mobile was buying up fiber internet infrastructure around the country, it made huge strides in its fixed wireless home internet business. Verizon also added thousands of fixed wireless customers, and AT&T did what it could to keep up.
Smaller providers got in the game too, and in September OXIO and Comtrend announced a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) platform designed to help rural service providers offer their own fixed wireless service home internet networks that would piggyback on existing cell networks.
Customers love these BSPs’ low monthly rates, especially when bundled with cell phone service. But the success of cell-based fixed wireless home internet service also showed that many customers cared more about a decent customer experience than about ridiculously fast speeds.
It was all backed up by figures from JD Power, which has reported twice as many signups for wireless as wired internet in the past six months. It also found higher satisfaction among fixed wireless internet customers than cable or fiber internet customers in 2025.
Do BSPs’ Customer Service Promises Hold Water?
The truth is, it’s easy to promise better customer service but difficult to actually provide it. It’s also rather difficult to know whether customer service has actually improved. So are BSPs companies promising better customer service because they can’t offer anything else?
The promises might be hollow, but advances in AI customer service and remote assistance tools could make a real difference for customers on the ground. Of course, layoffs of customer support teams and outsourcing to AI support could also create profoundly negative experiences for real customers.
We’ll keep watching for signs that customer service is actually improving, but one thing is clear: customers care deeply about their interactions with their BSPs, so it makes sense for providers of all sizes to focus on customer experience and service — rather than just speed or tech type — in 2026 and beyond.
