Jessica Fischer
Chief Financial Officer at Charter Communications
Thanks, Tom. Let's now turn to our customer results on slide five. We grew total residential and SMB customer relationships by 129,000 in the first quarter. Including residential and SMB, we grew our Internet customer relationships by 185,000 in the quarter. We continue to see record low combined competitive and move churn, which has reduced our selling opportunities and very low nonpay churn across our footprint. Similar to the fourth quarter, we saw both lower Internet churn and lower Internet connects than in the first quarters of 2021, 2020 and 2019. And this was true across our footprint regardless of competing technology. Turning to video. Video customers declined by 112,000 in the first quarter. Wireline voice declined by 150,000, and we added 373,000 mobile lines. Despite the lower number of selling opportunities from reduced activity levels, we continue to drive mobile growth with our high-quality, attractively priced service. Moving to financial results, starting on slide six.
Over the last year, we grew total residential customers by 674,000 or 2.3%. Residential revenue per customer relationship increased by 1% year-over-year driven by promotional rate step-ups and video rate adjustments that pass through programming rate increases. These effects were partially offset by the same bundle and mix trends we've seen over the past year, including a higher mix of nonvideo customers and a higher mix of low-priced video packages within our base. Additionally, this quarter's revenue was negatively impacted by $20 million in adjustments related to sports network rebates, which we intend to credit to qualified video consumers. These rebates are also reflected in lower programming expense this quarter with no impact to adjusted EBITDA. Excluding the impact of sports network credit I just mentioned, our residential ARPU grew by 1.2% year-over-year. Also, keep in mind that our residential ARPU does not reflect any mobile revenue or video programming pass-through increases announced late in the first quarter. As slide six shows, residential revenue grew by 3.7% year-over-year and by 3.9% year-over-year when excluding the sports network credit. Turning to commercial. SMB revenue grew by 4.6% year-over-year, reflecting SMB customer growth of 4.4%.
Enterprise revenue was up by 3.7% year-over-year. Excluding all wholesale revenue, enterprise revenue grew by 6.5%, and enterprise PSUs grew by 5.2% year-over-year. First quarter advertising revenue grew by 11.5% year-over-year or by 5.1% excluding political revenue, primarily due to our growing advanced advertising capabilities. Mobile revenue totaled $690 million with $292 million of that revenue being device revenue. Other revenue increased by 5.2% year-over-year and includes two months of rural construction initiative subsidies totaling $19 million. In total, consolidated first quarter revenue was up 5.4% year-over-year. Moving to operating expenses and EBITDA on slide seven. In the first quarter, total operating expenses grew by $410 million or 5.4% year-over-year. Programming costs declined by 0.4% year-over-year due to a decline in video customers of 2.1%, a higher mix of lighter video packages, a $20 million benefit related to sports network rebates that I mentioned and $34 million of other favorable adjustments, much of which was not unique year-over-year.
All of that was mostly offset by higher programming rates. Excluding both of the adjustments I just mentioned, programming costs grew by 1.4%. And looking at the full year 2022, we now expect programming cost per video customer to grow in the low to mid-single-digit percentage range versus mid-single digits previously. Regulatory connectivity and produced content declined by 7.4% primarily driven by lower Lakers RSN costs, lower video CPE sold to customers and lower regulatory and franchise fees. The decline in Lakers costs was primarily driven by the delayed start to the NBA season in 2020, which drove more Lakers games charges into Q1 of 2021, making for an easier comparison this year. Excluding the RSN costs from both years, regulatory connectivity and produced content declined by 5.6%. And for the full year 2022, we expect regulatory connectivity and produced content expense to decline in the mid-single-digit percentage range versus 2021 primarily due to lower video CPE sold to customers and lower RSN costs given the abnormal Lakers game scheduled last year. Cost to service customers increased by 5.3% year-over-year.
The increase was primarily driven by higher bad debt, given unusually low bad debt in the first quarter of 2021 when bad debt was down $100 million versus the first quarter of 2020, benefiting from the government stimulus packages. In fact, payment trends in the first quarter continue to be very good. And excluding bad debt from both years, cost to service customers grew by 1.8% primarily due to a larger customer base, previously planned wage increases to $20 per hour starting wage for hourly field operations and call center employees and higher health benefit and fuel costs. As the year progresses, prior year bad debt expense normalizes and should drive meaningfully slower growth in cost to service expense line during the second half of the year. Marketing expenses grew by 10.1% year-over-year due to higher labor costs driven by previously planned wage increases and temporarily greater staffing levels as Charter completes the in-sourcing of its inbound sales and retention call centers with a focus on providing better service to new and existing customers. For the full year 2022, we expect marketing expense to grow in the mid-single-digit percentage range versus 2021, although marketing expense growth is likely to remain at elevated levels in the second quarter.
Mobile expense totaled $760 million and were comprised of mobile device costs tied to device revenue, customer acquisition and service and operating costs. And other expenses increased by 12.5% primarily driven by a favorable nonrecurring adjustment in the prior year period, making for a challenging comparison this year and higher labor costs. Adjusted EBITDA grew by 5.4% year-over-year in the quarter. A quick note about inflation before moving on to net income. Certain costs of operating our business such as labor and fuel costs are currently subject to inflationary pressure. But given our previously planned move to a $20 per hour starting wage and our long-term relationships and contracts for goods and services, we haven't yet seen a significant impact on inflation in our P&L. I would also note that our consumers are experiencing inflationary pressure, but given the availability of subsidies for broadband and our focus on saving customers hundreds of dollars per year by switching to our converged connectivity product, we believe we are well positioned for the changing market. Turning to net income on slide eight.
We generated $1.2 billion of net income attributable to Charter shareholders in the first quarter versus $800 million last year. The year-over-year increase was driven by a nonrecurring litigation settlement charge in other operating expenses for the first quarter of 2021 and higher adjusted EBITDA. Turning to slide nine. Capital expenditures totaled $1.9 billion in the first quarter, just above last year's first quarter spend of $1.8 billion. We spent a total of $232 million on our rural construction initiative in the quarter. Most of that spend relates to design, walk out and make ready and as expected, has not yet resulted in significant passings growth. And the vast majority of that spend is accounted for in line extension. We spent $74 million on mobile-related capex, which is mostly accounted for in support capital and was driven by investments in back-office systems. As slide 10 shows, we generated $1.8 billion of consolidated free cash flow this quarter, a decrease of $55 million or 3% year-over-year. Excluding a onetime litigation payment of $220 million made in the first quarter, free cash flow grew by $165 million or 8.9% year-over-year. Please note that in the second quarter, we'll begin making quarterly cash tax payments for fiscal year 2022.
These payments are consistent with the cash tax outlook that we provided in our fourth quarter investor call. We finished the quarter with $94.9 billion in debt principal. Our current run rate annualized cash interest is $4.4 billion. As of the end of the first quarter, our ratio of net debt to last 12-month adjusted EBITDA was 4.43 times. We intend to stay at or just below the high end of our four to 4.5 times target leverage range. During the quarter, we repurchased six million Charter shares and Charter Holdings common units totaling about $3.6 billion at an average purchase price of $600 per share. And since September of 2016, we've repurchased $60.4 billion or nearly 42% of Charter's equity. Our path to continue to grow our business remains strong, and we will do that by furthering convergence in our connectivity business, allowing us to capture additional share, focusing on expanding our footprint and by continuing to improve the customer experience and extending customer lives. By executing on those items, we will drive customer and share growth, free cash flow growth and shareholder value.
Operator, we're now ready for Q&A.