Why is FWA Outperforming?

Ben Midanek is a marketing and customer acquisition executive with 15+ years’ experience delivering profitable growth across the telecommunications and media sectors, most recently serving as Chief Marketing Officer for Kinetic, an internet service provider with >1M customers across 18 states. 

This article is the second in a two-part series on the rise of FWA home internet offerings, its impact on the US broadband market, and the differences in customer experience and perceptions that are reshaping consumer preferences. The first article examined FWA’s industry-leading growth and consumer loyalty, and this second piece dives into the underlying differences in brand perception, product attributes, and customer experience driving consumer preference for FWA.  

The emergence of FWA home internet has disrupted the US broadband landscape, resulting in subscriber losses for cable providers and slower growth for fiber operators. Data from NPS Prism shows that the rapid growth of these offerings is supported by industry-leading NPS as well as stronger brand perception, a better product value proposition, and a superior customer experience.  

Stronger brand perception

Customers rate FWA providers more highly than cable and fiber operators on all nine of the brand attributes tracked by NPS Prism. The gap is particularly pronounced on customer perceptions of value for money and ease of doing business, but it’s notable and perhaps surprising that – even compared to fiber – FWA customers are more likely to see the providers as leaders in technology who offer better products and services. 

Better product value proposition

FWA offerings also outperform on product attributes. Compared to cable, customers rate FWA offerings more highly on all nine of the product attributes tracked by NPS Prism, with the gap particularly pronounced on cost (-19pt gap in % of customers strongly satisfied), customer service (-19pt gap), and plan options (-18pt gap).

FWA outperforms fiber offerings on seven of nine attributes as well, albeit by smaller margins, with two exceptions being network speed and reliability, on which fiber scores slightly better. However, given fiber connections actually deliver vastly superior network speed and reliability, the small size of the gap in customer perception reinforces the notion that FWA offerings are more than “good enough” for many consumers. 

Better experience across customer episodes

FWA providers deliver a superior experience across key customer episodes. The difference is particularly stark on customers’ experience with price changes, where cable customers report an episode NPS (eNPS) of -37 compared to -16 eNPS for fiber and 8 for FWA. These differences highlight consumers’ frustration with confusing promotional pricing, which is particularly common with cable providers, and the appeal of the price guarantees offered by FWA providers. 

When it comes to actually using the internet, FWA outperforms fiber by a considerable margin on browsing and streaming video (eNPS gap of 18 and 15, respectively), while they are rated similarly when it comes to video conferencing and gaming – both activities more dependent on upload speeds. However, the fact that FWA performs on par with fiber even for these upload-intensive episodes demonstrates that fiber’s superior network speed is not enough on its own to neutralize the competitive threat posed by FWA. 

NPS Prism data can provide further insight into customer experience differences at the provider level as well. For example, when it comes to customer experience of price changes, there are significant differences by provider both within and across technologies.

For example, among FWA providers, AT&T customers report experiencing price changes more often (9% incidence vs. 6% for other players) and report a significantly worse experience (-14 eNPS vs. 15 and 17 for other players). In other words, the experience of price changes is both more frequent and more painful for AT&T customers compared to customers of the other leading FWA providers.

Among fiber players, Frontier customers report a higher incidence of price changes (13% vs. 9% and 7% for other fiber players) but also a much better experience (-8 eNPS vs. -30 and -34 for other players).

Customers of all of the leading cable operators report a higher frequency and worse experience with price changes compared to fiber and FWA providers. This is perhaps unsurprising given cable providers’ heavy use of promotional acquisition pricing, which results in most customers receiving a meaningful price increase after 12 or 24 months. 

Driving customer preference and loyalty with NPS Prism insights 

Finding ways to effectively counter the competitive threat posed by FWA offerings will be critical to the success of both cable and fiber operators over the next several years. An important first step is understanding how each provider stacks up in the eyes of customers, and identifying and addressing the underlying factors driving consumer preferences and loyalty. As new bundle offerings enter the market, understanding how NPS, switching intent, and brand attribute satisfaction differ between bundle vs. non-bundle customers will also be key. NPS Prism can provide unique and valuable insights across all of these dimensions.

Reach out to the NPS Prism team if you’d like to set up a discovery session to find out more about how your customer experience stacks up and where you can improve to drive greater customer preference and loyalty. 

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