How US Broadband Operators Repriced, 2018–2026: Gigabit, Entry Tiers and Terms at 22 Brands

Start with the same product over time. Each panel is one download tier, with the median list price sampled for cable and for fiber in every release from 2018 to 2026. The question for an operator is simple: at a given speed, who moved the price, and when.

Cite this chart: G2M Insights, "How US Broadband Operators Repriced, 2018–2026: Gigabit, Entry Tiers and Terms at 22 Brands," G2M Communications Research, edition urs-2026-v2, g2m.ai/research/communications/how-us-broadband-operators-repriced.

Cable's 100 to 249 Mbps tier fell from $80.95 to $49.99 in a single release, the 2023 survey collected in 2022. The 250 to 499 Mbps tier fell from $100.95 to $75 across the 2024 and 2025 releases. Cable gigabit drifted from $129.99 in 2022 to $110 in 2026. Fiber's gigabit median moved inside a $89 to $100 range over the same eight releases.

The collection years behind those releases, 2022 to 2024, are the years the national carriers scaled fixed wireless and fiber construction peaked. The survey cannot attribute the cuts to either, but the timing is what an operator who lived through it would expect. By the 2026 release the cable and fiber medians are within a dollar of each other at 100 to 249 Mbps and within $5 at 250 to 499 Mbps.

There is no share left to buy with a further gigabit list-price cut. Fiber has held $90 to $100 for eight releases and every national cable peer has come to within $20 of it. A gigabit card still above $120 is out of line with peers; one below $100 undercuts an anchor nobody has moved.

Cite this chart: G2M Insights, "How US Broadband Operators Repriced, 2018–2026: Gigabit, Entry Tiers and Terms at 22 Brands," G2M Communications Research, edition urs-2026-v2, g2m.ai/research/communications/how-us-broadband-operators-repriced.

In the 2018 release, gigabit was the top of nearly every rate card, priced at a median of $152.98 on cable and $112.47 on fiber, and it was 8% of sampled offers. In 2026 it is 42% of offers, priced at $110 and $90.47, and a tier above it is now common: 14% of cable offers and 34% of fiber offers are faster than a gigabit, at medians of $140 and $150.

Fiber did not cut to get there. It held gigabit near $90 to $100 and added multi-gigabit tiers above it. Cable moved gigabit down into the slot fiber had already priced, and put 2 Gbps where gigabit had been. The fastest sampled tier by brand is in the table above; on cable it is 2 Gbps at $140 to $150, on fiber it runs from 2 to 10 Gbps.

If gigabit is still the top of your card, you have no premium lever on it, and your gigabit price is read against a $110 mid-tier rather than a $150 top tier. A multi-gigabit tier is now the top of the ladder, and the market has already set its price.

Each row is a brand's median list price for its gigabit tier in the 2022 release, the first after the FCC quadrupled the survey sample and the last collected in the pandemic years, joined to its price in the 2026 release. The same four-release window applies to every brand. Cable brands are in navy, fiber brands in teal. The change is in the monthly charge before mandatory fees, so a brand that added fees does not appear to have raised its price.

Cite this chart: G2M Insights, "How US Broadband Operators Repriced, 2018–2026: Gigabit, Entry Tiers and Terms at 22 Brands," G2M Communications Research, edition urs-2026-v2, g2m.ai/research/communications/how-us-broadband-operators-repriced.

The cuts are concentrated in cable. Sparklight, Spectrum, Mediacom and Optimum are down 18 to 27 percent over the four releases. Xfinity is flat because its cut came earlier, from $127 to $108 between the 2019 and 2021 releases. Cox has charged $119.99 in every release since 2018. Fiber brands split by type: the competitive overbuilders held or cut, Metronet by 22 percent and Google Fiber unchanged at $70 since 2018, while the regional telephone incumbents raised list price, altafiber by 7 percent, Ziply by 13 percent and Kinetic by 18 percent. AT&T and Verizon Fios went up by $5 and $10.

These are national prices. In the 2026 release, 86% of cable offers and 75% of fiber offers from brands sampled in five or more states carried one monthly price in every state, so a competitor's price in this table is its price in your market. Sparklight, with 10 different gigabit prices across its footprint, is the exception among the large brands.

How contested a footprint is does not explain the table. The last two columns give the share of each brand's footprint with three or more credible providers and with fiber present, from the December 2025 FCC Broadband Data Collection. Xfinity and Cox face as much fiber overbuild as Spectrum and Sparklight and did not move. A national list price cannot answer local competition; where operators do answer it, they use promotions and retention offers that no public dataset records. Astound's $205.99 across 11 states, up from $153.99 in 2022, is the clearest reminder that a list price is not what customers pay.

Read a rival's list price for its promotional headroom, not its street price: the gap between the two is what it can spend to win an address. Expect cable and competitive fiber rivals to hold or cut their cards, and regional telephone incumbents to drift up.

For each provider in each state, the cheapest sampled offer that meets the 100 Mbps down, 20 Mbps up benchmark. The chart shows the median of those entry prices by technology and release. Fixed wireless is shown as the national carriers' list prices, because their filings carry no speed tiers to match against.

Cite this chart: G2M Insights, "How US Broadband Operators Repriced, 2018–2026: Gigabit, Entry Tiers and Terms at 22 Brands," G2M Communications Research, edition urs-2026-v2, g2m.ai/research/communications/how-us-broadband-operators-repriced.

Cable's median entry price for a benchmark-speed service was $104.99 in the 2018 release and $70 in 2026, with $17 of the fall in the last two releases. Fiber's entry price has been $63 to $70 in every release since 2019, and DSL's has not moved from about $70. Verizon's fixed-wireless list price has a median of $65 and T-Mobile's $61.81 in the 2026 release.

Fixed-wireless filings do not describe a tier. T-Mobile files minimum speeds of 2 Mbps or 25 Mbps and Verizon files from 50 Mbps upward, so a fixed-wireless offer cannot be matched to the 100/20 benchmark the way a wireline offer can. The list price is the comparable figure, and it sits a few dollars under cable's new entry price.

The bottom of the card has no list-price room left. Defending the entry tier against fixed wireless has to come from bundling, mobile and retention offers; a $60 rate card is not viable and the market already knows it.

Price is not the only term on a rate card. For each cable brand, the share of its sampled offers with an upload speed of 100 Mbps or faster in the 2022 release and in 2026, and the share with no data cap.

Cite this chart: G2M Insights, "How US Broadband Operators Repriced, 2018–2026: Gigabit, Entry Tiers and Terms at 22 Brands," G2M Communications Research, edition urs-2026-v2, g2m.ai/research/communications/how-us-broadband-operators-repriced.

In the 2022 release no Xfinity, Cox or Spectrum offer carried a 100 Mbps upload. In 2026, 50% of Cox's offers, 46% of Xfinity's and 24% of Spectrum's do. Mediacom, Optimum, Sparklight and Astound are still at or near zero. Across all cable offers, the share with no data cap rose from 55% in 2022 to 86% in 2026; Xfinity went from 31% to 100% in the same period, while Cox's sampled offers still carry a cap.

Fiber's product advantage is unchanged: 82% of sampled fiber offers are symmetric in 2026 and the median fiber gigabit offer uploads at 1,000 Mbps against 50 Mbps on cable. What changed is that the three largest cable operators have started to close that gap on their rate cards, and the regional brands have not.

If you sell cable and your card still lists a 35 Mbps upload and a data cap, that is what the fiber operator across the street sells against, and Xfinity, Cox and Spectrum have shown the gap can be closed without cutting price. If you sell fiber, your symmetric upload still beats most cable rivals by twenty to one, but it no longer separates you from the three largest.

Five findings, read from the operator's side of the table.

• Gigabit. The market has landed at $110 on cable and $90 on fiber and stopped. A card still above $120 is out of line with peers; a cut below $100 undercuts an anchor nobody has moved in eight releases. There is no share left to buy with a gigabit list-price cut.
• The top of the ladder. Gigabit is a mid-tier price now. If it is still your top tier, you have no premium lever, and the multi-gigabit slot above it is already priced at $140 to $150.
• Rivals. A competitor's list price here is its list price in your market. Read it for promotional headroom, the gap between list and street, and expect cable and competitive fiber to hold or cut while regional telephone incumbents drift up.
• The entry tier. Cable's cheapest benchmark offer sits at $70, level with fiber and within $10 of fixed-wireless list prices. The floor is set; defend it with bundling, mobile and retention, not with the rate card.
• Terms. Upload speed and data caps are where the largest cable operators moved without touching price. A cable card with a 35 Mbps upload and a data cap is what a fiber rival sells against; a fiber operator's symmetric upload still beats most cable rivals, but no longer sets it apart from Xfinity, Cox or Spectrum.

None of this is what households pay. Promotions, retention offers and bundles are not in any public dataset, and the list price is the ceiling they are negotiated down from. What the survey shows is where each operator set that ceiling, and how it moved.