- Launches Xfinity Brand for DOCSIS 3.0 Broadband, Digital Video & Phone Service
Comcast’s fourth quarter report shows it added a net 247,000 high-speed broadband subscribers and 243,000 digital phone subscribers in the fourth quarter.
However, competition from satellite and telco pay-TV services caused Comcast to lose more than 199,000 pay-TV (video) subscribers during the quarter. It’s a worrisome loss because Comcast is first and still foremost a pay-TV service.
Faultline
warns, "Comcast lost 2.6% of its TV customer base last year, and that’s the customer base that it gets all of its other sources of revenue from. That amounts to 199,999 customers falling off the map in the quarter and 623,000 in the entire year, a quarterly average of 156,000. So in the December quarter, that process of losing customers accelerated. Grim news."
Comcast will shortly launch in 11 markets the brand "Xfinity" for its DOCSIS 3.0 super-fast broadband, digital video and digital phone service.
Top management has been involved in the attempt to acquire 51% of NBC Universal from General Electric. The involvement will continue — and perhaps increase — as Comcast fights off attacks from other pay-TV services at government regulation agencies. The other pay-TV services want to make sure they can still get NBC TV-owned networks on the same terms they have had in the past.
Once the deal is completed, Comcast management will have its hands full bringing NBC TV back to prominence in a fiercely competitive market.
Comcast knows how to make money. Its profit more than doubled in the quarter to $955 million from a year earlier’s $412 million.
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