Comcast Loses 500k Video Customers, Fails To Add Broadband Users For First Time In History
from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept
Comcast had a particularly ugly second quarter, according to the company’s latest earnings report. The nation’s biggest cable giant not only lost half a million pay TV subscribers as the cord cutting trend continued, it failed to add any new broadband customers for the first time in company history.
Users are increasingly cutting the cable TV cord because they’re tired of paying a small fortune for bundles of cable channels they never watch. Instead, they’re shifting to over the air antennas (OTA), TikTok, or cheaper, more flexible streaming video alternatives. As a result, Comcast has lost nearly 1 million cable TV subscribers in the first half of 2022 alone.
On the broadband side, there are simply not that many more new broadband subscribers to add. And some companies, like AT&T, are finally starting to more seriously deploy fiber after decades of cutting corners. Comcast is also facing some added heat from home 5G offerings from wireless providers. This was all phrased rather… uniquely by Comcast executives:
a unique and evolving macroeconomic environment that is temporarily putting pressure on the volume of our new customer connects.
But even Comcast’s gambit on evolutionary new services haven’t been going particularly well. Peacock, Comcast’s relatively new streaming service, also failed to add any new customers. And while Comcast broadband revenues jumped 6.8 percent year over year, that was primarily due to the company’s tendency to nickel-and-dime existing, captive customers with price hikes and annoying fees.
And of course with such a problematic second quarter, Comcast is all but guaranteed to nickel-and-dime existing customers even harder to compensate. It’s all part of the fun in a nation where an estimated 83 million residents currently only have one broadband provider to choose from, usually Comcast or Charter Communications (Spectrum).
Wireless (5G) and low-orbit satellite (Starlink, Amazon) can help some, but both tend to be pricey and no real substitute for healthy, market-by-market affordable, fiber broadband competition, which as our recent report notes, remains severely lacking.
Filed Under: 5g, broadband, cable, competition, cord cutting, fixed wireless, high speed internet, streaming
Companies: comcast
Comments on “Comcast Loses 500k Video Customers, Fails To Add Broadband Users For First Time In History”
What Rocket say?: Boo Hoo Hoo
It's their own fault.
If they don’t have any new broadband customers it’s their own damn fault. I have a comcast line that runs by my property on the other side of the road. I’m on year 4 of trying to become a customer as they are my only real option. They’ve had $25,000 of my money since December and keep coming up with delays. I’m told it should only be another 4 to 8 weeks.
I have zero sympathy for their situation.
Comcast won't be affected by this loss
This will not affect Comcast. They can easily work around this.
Whenever they lose customers they can simply charge their remaining customers more to make up for the lost revenue from lost customers.
Simple.
Problem solved.
If they lose more customers, they can simply do this again.
It’s a simple renewable solution. Like printing money. There are no drawbacks to worry about.
Re:
If they lose more customers, they can simply do this again.
Until they run out of customers to lose. Didn’t think of that, did you, Comcast shill?
Good!
One can only hope for Comcrap to go out of business.
Comcast last quater net: >US$3.5 BILLION
Comcast CEO total compensation 2021: ~US$34 million
Comcast customer service rep annual income: ~US$30,000-35,000
Comcast US government lobbying:
– spends roughly $15 million annually
– engages over a 100 lobbyists
Calm down. Your monthly Comca$h bill will just increase to make up for the lost.
Geesh!
Lost Customer
Funny, I’m one of those lost customers. Google Fiber came into the neighborhood, and now my internet doesn’t routinely go down every night at around the same time. This also means less calls to an automated system that tells me to “restart” the modem, and refuses to give me the option to talk to anyone. In fact, haven’t had to call in yet. Even if Google’s customer service is some how worse than what I dealt with while I was with Comcast, it’ll probably still be worth it by virtue of how rare an outage has become. The rare outage thing is kind of nice.
Re:
Since Google’s “customer service” is also automated with zero option to talk to a human, it’s exactly the same as Comcast’s.
Re: Re:
Kind of funny then, that their customer service is more highly rated then the rest of the ISP industry then. I mean, if you can’t talk to a human, and STILL have higher customer satisfaction then everybody else, that’s saying something.
5g service
The T-Mobile 5G in my area is pretty cheap.
$50 (vs $75 for Comcast’s cheapest) and 50/25 30ms real life service.
Comcast is 75/6 20ms.
T-Mobile is carrier grade NAT and doesn’t allow incoming IPv6, so it doesn’t work for anything P2P, but otherwise it’s a pretty good deal.
How stupid do you have to be to be losing money while holding a government supported monopoly?
Re:
It’s the inflation. Richard Bennett blowjobs under the desk just ain’t worth as much as they used to be.
The happiest day you’ll ever know: the day you get out of your comcast agreement.