Data Boosts Telco Customer Acquisition ROI. Here’s How & Why

For Communication Service Providers (CSPs)—including telcos, cable providers, and internet service providers (ISPs)—customer acquisition is arguably the biggest and most expensive challenge. 

That’s because today’s market is defined by:

• Low consumer switching costs
• Undifferentiated offerings
• High competition
• Tech disruptions

These pressures have pushed CSPs to outspend on marketing—but without accurate, relevant data, telco customer acquisition performance fails to reflect that investment.

Why is Telco Customer Acquisition So Challenging?

In an attempt to capture market share, CSPs are pouring more into advertising compared to other industries. In fact, four of the highest 10 ad spenders are CSPs, accounting for nearly 44% of ad spend, including:

• Comcast ($6.2 billion ad spend in 2023)
• AT&T ($3.8 billion)
• Verizon ($2.9 billion)
• Charter Communications ($2.4 billion)

By comparison, Procter & Gamble spent $4.8 billion; Ford Motor Co. $2.7 billion, and Alphabet (the parent company of Google) $2.5 billion.¹

But despite the large investment, CSPs see some of the lowest spend efficiency among industry verticals, with high customer acquisition cost (CAC) and low customer lifetime value (LTV). The top four CSPs spend twice as much on advertising as a percentage of revenues (4%) compared to the rest of the top 10 (2%). The spending is disproportionately high on linear TV and direct mail and disproportionately low on digital and direct-to-consumer (DTC).

Evolving Broadband Trends Affect Telco Customer Acquisition

Meanwhile, the broadband landscape is changing. Mobile service providers have entered the fray using 5G-powered Fixed Wireless Access (FWA), and CSPs are primarily relying on broadband for growth while expanding their offerings and entering new markets.

Broadband is growing faster than cellular; the global broadband market was valued at over $500 billion in 2025 and is expected to surpass $1,000 billion by 2034.² Asia-Pacific is leading the world in broadband adoption, accounting for 30% of all broadband revenue in 2024.

Developing a data-driven customer acquisition strategy in the telecom industry is essential to keeping pace with an evolving industry and improving marketing ROI.

Why Traditional Telco Data Falls Short

Current telecom market share solutions are panel-based, assume fixed connections, and don’t consider common broadband blind spots. To truly see what’s happening in the market, CSPs must be able to view and assess communication usage across both cellular and broadband.

Plus, household resolution at scale has long been identified as a hard problem due to difficulty in both identifying households and then keeping track of them amidst societal dynamism.

What Accurate, Granular Telco Data Reveals

To accurately understand broadband subscriber trends, CSPs must use data to:

• Know where customers have been: Explore and visualize usage patterns, including carrier transitions, dimensioned by granular geography and time across the entire telecom industry.
• See where customers are now: Explore and visualize market share and flow share at present across the entire geo-spectrum, including by household, Census block, zip, city, state, and nation.
• Distinguish between residential and SMB customers: Understand retention and telco churn risk of individual subscribers across all carriers, whether residential or SMB.
• Assess how FWA adoption is evolving: Explore penetration trends across specific geographies to inform operational planning, customer acquisition, and retention strategies.

Advanced Data Reveals True Broadband Market Opportunities

Good news: such specific, advanced telecom datasets are available! Take, for instance, Mobilewalla’s Market Flow solution. It’s a granular, population scale measurement tool to understand broadband market and flow share through:

• The industry’s first household dataset at scale, currently resolving 135 million households in the US. That’s more than 90% of the population.
• Business carrier identification across 16 million businesses.
• Cellular connection classifier that distinguishes cellular and wireless broadband device signals (IPs). That signals either “true” cellular or FWA use.
• Mover indicator at both a household and individual level.
• Geographic roll-up from household to zip to census block to city to state to country.
• Lead lists and audience segments that identify the best prospects in key markets.
• Behavioral and demographic data for a deeper understanding of subscribers.

Armed with the right data, CSPs can get the precise insights they need to create audience segments optimized for maximum ROI. By developing a granular understanding of what consumers want and need and effectively communicating that to the right customers at the right places and times, telco companies boost spend efficiency and effectiveness.

Use Data to Drive Telco Customer Acquisition Wins

Ready to boost telco ROI with deeper customer insights? Learn how Market Flow works, the data it leverages, and how you can benefit. You can even get a free data sample to discover insightful telco data that decodes this evolving market.

Read Next: Leveraging Household Insights to Attract and Retain Subscribers - A Telco Case Study

1. https://austinvisuals.com/top-ad-spenders-in-the-u-s-in-2023/ 

2. https://www.precedenceresearch.com/broadband-services-market