Donut417 Charter vs Comcast technical approach is pretty different.
It is worth mentioning Cox as well, since they are being merged into Charter. The one notable difference with Cox is their push for FTTP in infill situations, where a new subdivision surrounded by HFC gets FTTP.
In short;
Cox = Opportunists. Cox appears willing to pick the best access method for a specific location, whether that means FTTP for new construction, infill, MDUs, or commercially attractive pockets, or upgraded HFC where coax plant already exists. They are too small to get any of the massive scale benefits that Charter and Comcast have.
Charter = Pragmatists. Charter is the scale and uniformity operator that wants to standardize as much as possible, simplify the product set, and upgrade the broadest possible footprint using a repeatable high-split / 1.2 GHz / DAA playbook. Use FTTP for new plant covering new territory. They picked one playbook for ALL of their HFC upgrades. Is it as good as Comcast’s plan? No. Is it more pragmatic? Probably.
Comcast = Platform maximalists. Comcast is pushing the outer limits of what HFC can become. Comcast is the industry’s HFC R&D engine. Without Comcast aggressively pushing the platform forward, Charter and Cox would likely have a much weaker technology roadmap and far less vendor momentum behind next-generation HFC plant. Unfortunately, Comcast also has the least focused upgrade roadmap because they are -trying all the things- at the same time. It’s why you see them sometimes upgrade the same neighborhood twice within a limited time window. Doing mid-split, FDX, and EPON at the same time is a bit like trying to walk and chew gum and read the newspaper at the same time!
As for billing practices all three are mystery soup where pricing varies by market and time of year.
Network wise, Comcast generally has the best national backbone out of the three, with the most peering. They want to not just be an access company - the iBone has evolved into an enterprise grade carrier network that competes with the likes of Lumen or Verizon Enterprise.
Cox and Charter dabble in this too, but neither come anywhere close in terms of backbone maturity.
*Comcast LOCAL network performance varies wildly depending on market. One market might have higher latency floors than the next based on path in the network out to the greater internet. For example, my Northern VA address has to traverse out to Richmond, VA first, then back up to Ashburn which would just be 20mi away as the birds fly! This tacks on a 20ms penalty to the service on top of the HFC latency between the modem and CMTS. Verizon is no better, hauling all traffic down to the Culpepper, VA tandem CO, then back up to Fairfax, then Ashburn. Verizon does have less visible equipment in the path, so the penalty is more 5-6ms instead of 20ms.
