We have Rogers here as our next presenter. A lot's going on with Rogers recently, and lots to unpack. So we've got Tony Staffieri, CEO; Glenn Brandt, CFO. Thanks to both of you for being here to share your insights and time.
Good morning. Thanks for having us.
Thank you. You were not in the room earlier today, but I will mention it again. A theme we are going to have throughout the morning is talking a particularly large amount of the time about non-core telecom assets because there is so much going on. I do want to start there with you guys because it is where investors are asking questions. By your own admission, if all of these sports teams are worth $15 billion, your market cap right now is only $19 billion. That is the definition of material. We will start there, if you do not mind. Can you give us any updated sense of the factors that are influencing both how you structure any potential deal? You have said you have institutional investor interest. How you structure a deal and the potential timing of a deal?
I'll leave it open-ended to start with and maybe drill down in more detail after.
Sure. I'll start. A couple of things in terms of our sports and entertainment strategy. I think it's relevant to sort of say off the top, this isn't a distraction from our focus on cable and wireless. We continue to focus on the execution there, and we're pleased with what we're seeing, and we'll come back to that. In terms of surfacing the value, which has always been the objective with respect to our sports and entertainment holdings, there are a few steps. We've said what the steps are and helped put a little bit more color on it. First and foremost was to consolidate the assets. We had the opportunity to purchase Bell's stake in MLSE, and we may have an opportunity—we have the opportunity—next year to buy the remaining 25% of MLSE. That's a significant step in consolidating the assets.
That's the first thing. Second is to eke out the synergies, both in terms of revenue as well as cost, in between MLSE and our sports and entertainment. There is material cash flow generation and opportunities that we've already started to work on. The third is, what does this mean for shareholders? How do we actually get the value to them? To your point, Vince, at $19 billion, arguably, does not even reflect the full value of the cable and wireless business today, but certainly reflects little, if any, of that roughly $15 billion. Once we buy the other 25%, we're talking in excess of $20 billion of assets that, as I say, produce cash flow, but importantly, also continue to grow materially on a year-on-year basis. We've got a set of assets that continue to appreciate.
What we said is, and at the same time, we are squarely focused on our delivering plans. We are balancing what we're doing in sports and entertainment with our stated objective that by second quarter of next year, we're down about 3.5x . We said that two years ago, and we're committed to that. We are balancing the pieces to get us there. What you could and should expect is sometime in the near to midterm is bringing in equity money on sports and entertainment to provide cash to assist with the balance sheet. We may do it in pieces over a period of time. That is one. Think about that as an important interim step as we balance our balance sheet needs. We're considering, in terms of surfacing the value, all the options, bringing in more equity.
We're also looking at options to IPO a portion of it or a complete spinout of it. All of the options have pros and cons. Given the nature of the assets, there's no shortage of interest of investment in those assets. All of those have varying degrees of how and when they surface value for the Rogers shareholders. Again, that's squarely what we're focused on here, surfacing that value with a good set of assets. That process is probably something that is 12-24 months in fullness. Some of the options have tax implications. To do it on a tax-deferred basis takes a bit of time in getting the proper tax rulings. We're looking at all those options, as I said, and being very thoughtful in how we get to end the job while continuing to deliver the balance sheet.
Do you want to add anything, Glenn, before I follow up on it?
I think that covered it well.
The full timeframe of 12- 24 months, but in pieces, Tony. A first piece could happen before 12- 24 months, or the first piece does not happen until that window?
No, the first piece could happen before—I will say it broadly—within the next year, particularly as we approach the option to buy out the 25% partner in MLSE. Just to be transparent on it, we will not get to 3.5x without private investment. We will look to that as an interim step.
We have started talking with potential institutional investors. There's a tremendous amount of interest. It is a very unique collection of assets. I'm not aware of anyone else globally that has all of the major sports franchises in a single city, certainly not of the size of the GTA . It is attracting a tremendous amount of interest in the U.S., in Canada. There is a potential real estate play for any investors coming in as well with potential development opportunities in and around the Rogers Centre. There is a lot that is attracting interest.
Excellent. Just to clarify, you can have discussions with people anytime you want, but can a deal get done? Can one of these pieces of the puzzle get announced to the public before the other 25% shareholders dealt with, or does one have to come before the other?
We could potentially put together a deal before owning 100% by moving our sports holdings up into the holding company that owns our interest in MLSE. They become sister companies. You can't run all of the synergies until we own 100% of MLSE. We have a minority shareholder there. However, we could certainly take some of the benefit of the consolidation, combined ownership, and we could conceivably put together an opportunity for institutional investors to come in at that holding company level. The first step is to close on the Bell acquisition. That precedes everything. In the meantime, we'll determine how best to proceed. Yeah, something could come in the 6-12 month timeframe quite easily.
Thank you. Last question on this topic. The intention clearly is for Rogers to control with at least 51% basically forever. Is that fair? Maybe that's a preamble to the question I'll ask, but I think that was the interpretation I've had in the past, right?
Yeah. We think there's significant benefits in continuing to grow the value in the sports and entertainment. The best way to do it is through a controlling position. That is the intent. Now, maybe I'll just stop there for now.
Yeah. I want to make sure my expectations are properly set. And I have lots of conversations with investors about this. It just seems impossible to any of us that you'd ever get full credit for 100% of the private market value if it's within your public company. So unless you sold out at all, there's always going to be some sort of discount. Is that too negative, or do you guys actually see some sort of structure where the market, whether it's an IPO or just the private transaction you do, that would give you within Rogers shares 100% credit, or we always just have to accept you get some credit for the teams, but not 100%?
There's a couple of factors at play. Certainly, in a private transaction, you'll see full value. How does that translate in terms of reflected in our share price? I think you're right, Vince. It's sort of difficult to do because you all will sort of ask, "Well, how does that benefit the shareholder?" It'll help some. It'll set a value and a marker, but it won't be a continual valuation update the way some type of IPO or complete spinout would do. If we look at sports entities that are public, they trade at a discount to asset values. Frankly, so do most public companies. When there's an asset traded, it'll generally be at a premium. Even at a discounted, and depending on who you look at, it could be 15%-30% in terms of discount to asset values.
On a $20 billion asset value, if we took that number, even at a, take the number, 15%-30% discount, that's a lot of value that is nowhere near what's reflected in our share price today. The discount is something that is inherent, we think. The upside, even with the discount, is substantial.
Tough to argue with that. Substantial value and value that is growing. I assume you saw the Ark dose ROS not too recently, only 17% annual accretion in value. The longer you wait, it's just going up in value. Let's move on to wireless. I'll pause after in a second if somebody wants to come back to sort of head office and sports stuff. Feel free to. We should talk about wireless. Obviously, a big important business for you guys. There's been some industry challenges recently with volume in the industry slowing down and continued pressure on pricing and promotions. Let's start with just a recap of Q1. As you look back now and you've seen everybody's results, do you think there was some evidence of macroeconomic weakness in there or just purely the immigration trends changing that caused the wireless loading across the industry to be weaker?
I'll throw it out now. You can chime in as you wish on how's Q2 looking relative to Q1? Are there some trends firming up a little bit?
I think the big highlight for Q1, and now that everyone's reported, our sense—and now that we see everybody's numbers, it's validated—is that the size of growth in the market had contracted largely as a result of the new-to-Canada category. Last year, we saw total growth of 4%. We estimated total growth on what we saw is roughly 3%. That is what we expect for the year in terms of the size of the wireless market. It continues to grow. Give or take in the 3% range is, when we look at Q1 actuals, what we're seeing in the second quarter as we make our way to halfway through, continues to be what we're seeing. Little of that is population growth. Most of it continues to be penetration gains. The penetration gains are more susceptible to the macroeconomic factors that you talk about.
We have not seen much of an impact on that. We are always watching it in terms of—and you really see it in handset purchasing. I would say it is minor, if anything, in terms of the impact we see. That is size of market. What we did see is our competitors figuring out how to react price-wise in a much smaller market. It led to promotional areas that you do not typically see in the first quarter, given it is a low-volume quarter. First quarter in our business in wireless is typically about 10--15% of the total year volumes. It is a low-volume quarter. As we look to Q2, what we are seeing is much of the promotional activity subsiding, which is good to see. The size of the market is about the same.
We would describe it as stable, maybe up slightly in terms of traffic, but certainly down year- on- year, similar to what you saw in the first quarter.
You say about the same. You mean the percentage year-over-year decline is running around the same?
Yes.
Obviously, Q2 is seasonally bigger than Q1.
That's right. In terms of our own performance, we like what we see. We've always said we would focus on the Rogers brand. The vast majority of our net adds are on the Rogers brand. Migration from Chatr, Fido, and ultimately to Rogers continues to work well for us, while at the same time continuing to reduce churn. We like what we're seeing there in terms of our performance relative to the marketplace.
Great. You mentioned some of the new things we saw you do not typically see in a first quarter in terms of promotional behavior. One thing that struck me as interesting on your call, which was now three weeks ago or so, I guess, was you said the market is potentially pivoting to more device subsidy from monthly rate plan competition to mirror a bit more what we see in the U.S. Is that something you are already seeing, or is that something you think is going to happen? Is that a good or bad development in your view?
What we see is the opportunity. Traditionally, here in Canada, for a long while, the promotional pricing has been on the rate plans in terms of month-to-month. It is fair to describe it generally as an industry. Handsets have been fully costed, some discounting, particularly when it is subsidized by the OEMs. If you were to look at our P&Ls, and the P&Ls are the industry, handset costs are generally neutral to the P&L. Our focus now—and we have already launched new rate cards that you would have seen almost a month ago now—that focus on simplified pricing, simplified value proposition, but also focused on multiple lines. If you were to look at, certainly for us, and we estimate for the industry, a number of lines per account relative to the U.S., we are substantially below.
What you see is our price plans now focused on tiered pricing depending on the number of lines. You can get a fourth line for as little as $25-$35 on Rogers 5G. It makes sense in the context of the overall ARPA for the customer and the average ARPU per line. That is one step that you have already seen that the U.S. has been doing for a while. In the context of multiple lines, it is possible that you may see us introduce incentives more directed towards a discount on the handset rather than on the lines. We think the economics work better, particularly when you look at a handset discount or subsidy that is essentially tied to a commitment of two years generally. What we do know is contracts are helpful in continuing to reduce churn.
Our analysis and what we see coming out of the U.S. is it is accretive in terms of lifetime value and the economics of the wireless business. And so we're making moves in the marketplace along those lines, and we'll see how ultimately the market and the customers react.
Excellent. There is a mixed subscriber metric and government question for you. We have seen substantial reductions in pricing according to the CRTC data themselves recently and all the StatsCan data. Consumers seem to be benefiting from what has been going on in the market. Is there anything from a government standpoint with the new government and new industry minister that concerns you, or you think could be a positive? Dovetail, because it is a similar type of topic, can you give us any sense of what percentage of your wireless base has already repriced during that two-year cycle when the aggregate data seems to show big declines in wireless pricing? Are you well halfway through the headwind of repricing your base?
I'd phrase it this way. If we were to look at, there's a couple of things embedded in your question, Vince, particularly as those macroeconomic factors increase in terms of the Canadian economy, and especially as we go through a retooling of the economy, we're optimistic about a number of things happening that will be beneficial for the country long term, but there may be short-term implications. We are very cognizant of where consumers are at in terms of their ability to spend and looking at affordability. Our multi-line discount was kind of aimed at that type of thing. Certainly, the government stats indicate that pricing has come down in wireless. The difficult part of that is for many consumers, it's difficult to see because at the same time, usage is going up.
In addition to usage, they prefer to move from 4G to 5G, particularly if they have a new phone or a new device. There are a number of factors at play that sort of confuses the consumer in terms of where they're at vis-à-vis their spend with us or with any other provider in the country. What is clear is pricing in Canada is lower than the US. We have an industry that, if you were to look at the last several quarters, has had little to no growth overall. While we continue to drive top-line growth in wireless, it's important that the whole industry move forward in that fashion. Similarly with respect to ARPU, and that's been the issue. Volume-wise, we still continue to grow. I talked about the 3%.
We need to see ARPU grow in a healthy way. That's not where we're at today. Some of the price plan changes that I talked about are meant to help do that. In terms of changes to the government, we'll see what their thinking is in terms of telecom policy long term. We have been and continue to be concerned with some of the decisions that are outstanding. Generally, we hope that they continue to believe in facility-based investment, but more than believe in it, start to implement decisions that incent that in terms of mandated pricing rates that we think need to continue to be fully costed. This is a time, particularly as this government looks to, as I said, move the economy forward. Us and our industry are significant investors in infrastructure.
In order to ensure that those decisions are sound with respect to infrastructure investment, we can't have policies that undermine and allow access at below cost.
I'm going to ask one more last question and then pause if anyone in the room wants to get ready to put their hand up. The specific component of ARPU from roaming, is that a headwind you can quantify from the first quarter? What is your roughly total exposure to roaming now as a percentage of service revenue?
The no secret travel in the first quarter was down, particularly travel to the U.S. The impact on our ARPU was somewhere in the range of, call it 10-20%. I think it was sitting right around the midpoint of that in the first quarter. I expect, call them headwinds, if you will. I expect that to continue through the second quarter. I do expect there will be more travel through the summer, but some of that travel is moving out from North America and over to Europe and what have you. People, I expect in the summer, will continue to travel, but there was less of a time to adjust in Q1. 15% in Q1, not yet prepared to say whether that's going to trend throughout 2025. Also hoping that the political backdrop settles down a bit. We have a new government.
If we can sort of calm some of those waves, maybe that'll help the economy as well.
Go on. 15% of the total.
Of the ARPU decline.
Of the ARPU decline. Yeah. You don't have 15% of your total ARPU coming?
No, no. 15% of the ARPU decline.
Maybe you did wrong.
I knew before in my head, but thank you for clarifying. Yeah, 15% of the decline was caused by the roaming decline.
Anybody in the audience want to raise their hand and ask a question? Go ahead. Just wait for the mic, if you don't mind.
Any update on the structured deal closing? Once the money's in the bank, how do you plan on approaching the debt pay down in terms of timing? Do you wait till the MLSE transaction closes? Just how do you plan on allocating that capital and timing?
Sure. Thank you. Confident it will close in the second quarter. We're close. No further update there other than we're close. Once we close, we have some of the term facilities left over from the Shaw acquisition that we can pay down, some of our bonds we could tender. We'll deploy that cash fairly quickly. You would have seen in our Q1 release, we're sitting on about CAD 7.5 billion of liquidity at the end of Q1, just over CAD 2.5 billion of cash, and then additional available liquidity. There's ample liquidity to close on MLSE. Once we close on the structured equity, those funds will be used to either redeem, tender for bonds, pay down some of our other debt. It'll be deployed fairly quickly.
Can I just tag on to that? I mean, we saw BCE tender more for elongated bonds. We're trading at a discount to par. So you got a bit of a supercharge effect on how much debt they took down, but then the interest costs go forward, you sort of come out even. Does that make sense for Rogers to look at as well?
It does to some extent. I think there will be a balance across the balance sheet. It'll depend on the interest environment at the time as well as to where those are trading. A little premature for me to gauge to what extent that'll be, Vince. Certainly, that's something we've been looking at.
Okay. Yes.
Yeah. I just wanted to clarify your expectations for subscriber growth in the industry this year. When you say 3%, if I take 3% of 37 million mobile phone lines, that's a million, over a million. If I do it the other way, I think the first quarter was about 110, 112,000 net adds for the industry at 10%. If that's 10%, again, that's over a million. Is that what you're talking about, is mobile phones being up in that neighborhood of a million plus for this year?
That's right. As best we can see based on trending. As I said, it's less about population growth now, but the rate of penetration seems to be pretty consistent and has been for several years. That's where almost all of that growth is coming from. That's how we think about the number.
That's significant because I think last year, what was the growth? About the same, wasn't it?
No. The last year was over one and a half, and the year before that was 1.7.
1.7.
1.1.
Material deceleration. In the absence of no immigration this year, or very little, to grow a million plus, I think is, I mean, it's surprising to me. I didn't think it was that high, but your numbers, your internal work suggests that that's where the industry is going this year.
We do. That is the way we see it. Against that backdrop, we continue to focus on leading market share in that. Today we sit at 32%-33% of the market. We look to get at least that consistently so that we continue to grow. In our view, we have got an industry that on volume grows 3%. As I said, growing ARPU is really the next value for us and the industry.
I'll ask you another question to augment that. If you go back to when we just came off the peak of 1.7 million, I think you had framed the market as about half of that was population growth, half of it was penetration gain. Is that still in hindsight, still a fair characterization so people know what the two big moving pieces are?
Yeah. To put a finer point on it, at the time, this is back to 2023, was sort of the height of it. For the year, the market grew at 5.3% roughly. We said roughly half, it was half and half. That is where we are at today. I mean, the population growth is not zero, but somewhere between zero and half a point. We see penetration in the 2.5-2.8 range consistently.
Yep. Okay. Let's—oh, we have one more wireless question or whatever it is, Adam.
Yeah. Just a quick one to add to that. With AI, have you seen any early indications? Like you're talking penetration, obviously people are using AI on their phones more and also data more. Are you seeing any early signs of that and how that's sort of impacting your business?
I would say it continues to be in terms of the use cases on the phone increasing with some of the AI. Certainly, it's driving more data traffic if that's where you're going. We do see that. I would say it's part of a gradual boost on how we define the value proposition in each of our plans. To come back to that, it has traditionally been on data bucket sizes before throttling happens. More and more, it's about the other features. That's what you would have seen in our new price plan construct that we launched, is how do you get better, faster, including video quality is another factor that's relevant there. The short answer is yes. It's the beginning of more traffic. The opportunity for us is to continue to translate that to ARPU growth, but it'll be gradual.
Just to augment and clarify that answer as well, just for anybody in the room who's not aware, anything in terms of wearables, goggles, watches, whatever, those are not counted in your subscribers of mobile phone subscribers. You would see a different element of volume growth there in addition to just usage on the smartphones themselves. Is that fair?
Absolutely. To be clear, mobile phone is just that. IoT and connected devices are outside of that.
Any, before I move to cable, any new interesting developments on sort of IoT, MEC, private networks, that sort of the enterprise side of 5G that people were all excited about a few years ago and it seemed to die down, but it's still there and growing? Is it becoming more material?
Yeah, absolutely. Particularly in the context of IoT growing at double digits. It is a growing business with the use cases continuing to evolve, private area networks, seeing more and more use cases across a few different verticals or industries that we're focused on. More broadly, that's tied to our business segment, which we're seeing very good growth in wireless as well as on the wireline side. In some cases, double digit. We like what we see there. We had always been underpenetrated in that segment. Now that we have wireless, wireline nationally to put together, it's been a terrific growth opportunity for us. The IoT opportunity continues to grow, particularly as we move to introduce satellite. Much like you've seen in the U.S., we've been working with satellite operators here. We've announced that previously.
More to come on that later in the year.
Would the entire bucket of machine revenue be getting into the same snap bracket as what roaming is so that they offset each other even if roaming is declining and IoT and machine to machine in total, connected devices in total keeps growing?
Not yet. Not yet. It is smaller, certainly an offset. As I said, the rate of growth is significant, but off a smaller base. The other thing about roaming is today we measure it as a very defined number because it is charged separately. One of the things you would have seen on our most premium plan includes roaming. More and more, you should expect us to, while the absolute roaming comes down, we are working on how we actually offset it through conversion to higher price plans. We pick it up that way. We are thinking about it more holistically as how we manage that and still grow ARPU at the same time.
I hope Ted's not up there looking down at us getting mad, but there's 11 minutes left and we haven't mentioned cable yet, so we should probably spend a minute on it.
Ted was one of the first to get in wireless. He would understand.
Good. Revenue growth trends have not been the best since the Shaw acquisition closed and seem to be getting a little bit better. Can you talk about whether it is rate increase actions or volume actions or new product development actions? Can we expect to see a little bit better cable segment revenue growth in Q2 and beyond than what we saw in the last few quarters?
Yeah, very much so. What you saw in the last few quarters is a move back to flat on revenue, while at the same time continuing to ensure we have strong margins. I'll unpack it a little bit in terms of as we look to what I would describe as the underlying broadband or internet revenue in ARPU, good performance there in terms of ARPU growth as well as penetration gains that we're making on the internet side. That's been strong. I've talked about how our cable revenue includes the business side of it as well, and that continues to grow. The headwinds against it are video and the video revenue there, even though it's at a much less margin, roughly 45%-50% margins. That is a headwind. It has started to slow as we increasingly package our linear with OTT.
That's a good development and revenue opportunity for us moving forward. The other one is satellite TV. We're working on migrating those customers to alternate platforms where we have Nearnet, and now available is on our FWA product. With technology improvements we've made, particularly for rural, the FWA product can now handle the full suite of Rogers Xfinity products, including video. That's doing really well in the marketplace, particularly in places where we don't have a wireline network, Quebec and Cogeco territory in southwest Ontario.
This is something new to me. If you migrate the DTH subscribers to a fixed wireless platform, you may be even willing to accept accelerated revenue loss if then you can abandon the standalone cost of the satellite platform. It is a nice trade-off that we should not get too fixated on revenue.
Yes. Although I would say, Vince, the discount, it isn't necessarily a net discount when you look at bundling the whole household. The packages that typically the satellite customer has, they generally move to the premium package in terms of video for a number of reasons. Think about it as margin accretive. There may be some shaving on the revenue side, but net net, the economics are really good.
Maybe I read too much into your answer than the first time. So your intention is not to migrate all of them then. You're still going to have lease payments to TELUS at and keep running a system for a while for the customers who want the big premium video package and can't reach the fixed wireless network?
No, we want to continue to move them as quickly as possible. Some customers want to stay on it. It'll be several years in terms of migration. Over that period of time, we'll continue to look at solutions. We don't intend to invest more in satellite or infrastructure for that satellite business.
I just want to clarify something. You said 45%-50% margin on video. You're talking gross margin.
Yes.
Yeah.
Net of content costs, to be clear.
Net of content costs.
Yeah, on video.
If you then allocate all other service costs, your EBITDA margin on video is going to be meaningfully lower than that compared to you report 50, what was it, Glenn? 52?
A little higher than that. We've been in the range of 55-59 over the last several years.
Yeah, sorry. The 45%-50% is not comparable to the 55%.
45%-50% is at RCI Consolidated. I'm at cable with the 55%-59% .
Right. Yeah. But that's just gross margin after content costs.
That's right. That is why more and more we focus on getting better penetration with several products, including Self Protect as an example. Even the light streaming product is incremental. It is margin per household that we're focused on.
The rate increase portion of it, I mean, is there any specific answer on it? Has there been any meaningful customer dissatisfaction return after the recent set of increases? It seems to me like everybody put through crazy increases at the same time. It probably wouldn't be, but love to hear it from you.
No, nothing unusual. We continually look at the value proposition, and we are looking at price adjustments more surgically than we have in the past. As we have implemented those, we like what we are seeing in terms of being able to manage the customer, customer expectation, and the churn propensity of the customer.
No east-west dynamics anymore? Would your answer apply equally to Ontario as it does to Alberta and British Columbia, or is there still different behavior from one of the competitors?
I would say the west in terms of market dynamics. Good progress in the east. I would say in the west, our competitor still pivots primarily to promotional discounting relative to rack rates. It is something we will continue to manage. We do not always necessarily match because we do not have to. Frankly, the value proposition of the Rogers Xfinity product is resonating well in the marketplace. As I said, now that we have included Self Protect as an offering and now Pro Protect as well as Storm Ready, those have been compelling value propositions that have allowed us to not have to discount the broadband to the extent our competitor in the west has. We continue to manage it and compete in that context.
Great. I'm going to ask a CapEx question and then pause again as we get a few minutes left in case there's one last from the audience. Everybody else in the industry seems to have either already lowered their CapEx in the case of Quebecor or TELUS, or they're signaling lower CapEx quite meaningfully in the case of Bell, especially if you back up their Ziply business. You're down to 12-13% intensity in Canada. You guys now seem to be a bit of an outlier at sort of the $3.8 billion-$4 billion target is 19% on a consolidated basis. And tell me if I'm wrong, but my math, it's close to 23% within the cable segment. Does that make sense in this environment of more challenged industry growth? Can that come down in the future?
Yes, it can come down. We're two years on from closing on the Rogers Shaw transaction. And so there's still some systems work and some infrastructure work that's going on with that. That's now lightening up. I do expect that we will be on the low end of guidance for 2025. I'm not going to start guiding for 2026, but we continue to look at where our capital investment priorities are, where the capital intensity is, and continue to work on that. And so there are further savings ahead that I expect we will be able to ring through. I think capital intensity for wireless in the, say, mid-teens, 14-15% range. We're running around that level now.
If I look at cable, getting that from the low to mid, closer to the mid-20s down into the mid to high teens certainly is attainable over the, I'll say, medium term. That's where we're focused.
Go ahead.
Without excluding any part of our operations.
Mid-teen, that factors in whatever you have to do on gradual DOCSIS 4.0 upgrades?
Yes. The team's done a really good job on getting these reductions through efficiency rather than cutting. If you look at the plans we had with respect to cell tower densification as well as improving the cable plant in terms of mid-split, that continues to be on track in terms of our targets, really good progress in eking out the efficiencies. Most of those improvements that Glenn talked about are largely around efficiency improvements.
Great. Anybody have a burning question in the audience? We're going to have to ask it quick if you did. Wait for the mic, if you don't mind. You can thank this person after because my last one was going to be a tough one for you, Glenn, but I won't ask that.
I'm good on tough questions.
Thank you. I just have a question for FWA because since you mentioned that you're trying to migrate the satellite customers to FWA and just in terms of spectrum holding, you have lots of millimeter waves, which is good for FWA. Is there a strategy for FWA going forward? Because apparently there's a trend in the United States it has done really well. What's your take on the outlook for FWA and what is their strategy outlook for that? Thank you.
Yeah, in FWA, our strategy has been originally when we launched it, we said we were going to focus on FWA in where we do not have a wireline network. It is almost 7 million homes that we do not address. And given we have national wireless footprint, it was an obvious converged selling opportunity. We continue to follow that strategy. What we found was, as we offered it nationally, the use case, students, for example, secondary homes and things like that, it has been doing well nationally also. We have increased the capability, as I said. In terms of satellite video customers, most of those customers are rural. So millimeter becomes less relevant. There is lots of capacity in the lower band range to handle that volume. The strategy has continued to penetrate at a very disciplined and balanced price point.
We're at $60 today, up from when we launched it a year ago in earnest. It continues to do well. We just upped the speed up to 250 at the same time. It is more value, but also has the ability to carry the payload that the Xfinity video product requires.
Just to clarify, Tony, because the question linked it to the U.S. and what's going on there, in terms of using it as a disruptive force in urban markets to try to get 10-15% market share of broadband, is that in the.
No, that's not our strategy. We're doing it in a much more measured and balanced approach. What we're finding is we're getting good penetration without having to look to disruptive pricing.
I'm well aware. Just wanted to make sure you said it. Thank you very much, Tony and Glenn. That was very insightful. Thank you for spending your time with us today. We will just switch speakers up here and keep going. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.