What cable actually is
A coaxial line shared across a local node, originally built to deliver television. Download speeds are strongly competitive with fiber; upload is typically a small fraction of download, and performance can dip when the street is busy. Widely available in urban and suburban areas.
Cable availability nationally
| Speed | Share of US homes |
|---|---|
| 25/3 Mbps | 83.1% |
| 100/20 Mbps | 82.9% |
| 250/25 Mbps | 82.0% |
| 1 Gbps / 100 Mbps | 32.8% |
Cable providers we cover
Ranked by reported residential cable locations. We have detailed coverage pages for 31 of the 261 operators nationally, starting with the largest and the ones people actually search for.
| Provider | Residential locations | States |
|---|---|---|
| Cox | 6,447,111 | 18 |
| Mediacom | 2,630,802 | 22 |
| Astound Broadband | 2,213,317 | 12 |
| Sparklight | 2,092,486 | 23 |
| Breezeline | 1,245,192 | 14 |
| Midco | 529,137 | 5 |
| Armstrong | 290,054 | 6 |
| Buckeye Broadband | 209,201 | 4 |
Cable providers compared
Head-to-head where both operators reach enough of the same places for it to be a real choice:
- altafiber vs Spectrum
- Astound Broadband vs Spectrum
- Astound Broadband vs Xfinity
- AT&T Fiber vs Cox
- AT&T Fiber vs Spectrum
- AT&T Fiber vs Xfinity
- Brightspeed vs Spectrum
- Brightspeed vs Xfinity
- Google Fiber vs Cox
- Cox vs Spectrum
- Cox vs Xfinity
- Frontier Fiber vs Optimum
- Frontier Fiber vs Spectrum
- Frontier Fiber vs Xfinity
- Google Fiber vs Spectrum
- Google Fiber vs Xfinity
- Kinetic vs Spectrum
- Metronet vs Spectrum
- Metronet vs Xfinity
- Optimum vs Spectrum
- Verizon Fios vs Optimum
- Optimum vs Xfinity
- Quantum Fiber vs Spectrum
- Quantum Fiber vs Xfinity
- Sparklight vs Xfinity
- Verizon Fios vs Spectrum
- Spectrum vs Xfinity
- T-Mobile Fiber vs Xfinity
- Verizon Fios vs Xfinity
- WOW! vs Xfinity
- Ziply Fiber vs Xfinity