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Comcast and Xfinity Lose Customers - Thanks to Cord-Cutters and Competition from Wireless Internet Carriers (yahoo.com) 98

Bloomberg reports that Comcast's stock price took its biggest drop in over a year on Thursday, "after reporting drops in broadband and cable subscribers, and predicting more losses to come." Cord-cutting and increasing competition have eroded Comcast's traditional customer base. The company, which owns Xfinity, the NBCUniversal media empire and SkyTV, lost 490,000 cable-TV customers in the third quarter, better than analysts expected but part of an ongoing trend as consumers switch to streaming services like Netflix. It also lost 18,000 broadband subscribers in the quarter, with nearly all of those residential customers. Analysts had predicted Comcast would instead gain 10,900 residential broadband customers.

Shares fell as much as 8% on the news Thursday, their biggest intraday decline since July 2022.

"Growth has halted for Comcast — the largest US broadband provider, with 32 million homes," said Bloomberg Intelligence senior media analyst Geetha Ranganathan. "The company derives 80% of profit from cable, where, even after a pandemic-demand surge, broadband has been hurt by fierce competition and low-move activity among customers." Comcast expects "somewhat higher subscriber losses" in the fourth quarter due to pullback on promotional offers that targeted lower-end customers, Chief Financial Officer Jason Armstrong said on a call with investors. Revenue per customer climbed, however, in part because of price increases and promotions of higher-rate plans.

Broadband is becoming increasingly competitive as mobile providers move into the market with improved wireless internet offerings. In the past week, the Big Three — T-Mobile US Inc., AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. — all reported subscriber gains.

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Comcast and Xfinity Lose Customers - Thanks to Cord-Cutters and Competition from Wireless Internet Carriers

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  • by MpVpRb ( 1423381 ) on Sunday October 29, 2023 @10:42AM (#63963468)

    Wireless internet is not the answer
    We seem to have accepted the tradeoff of choosing portability over performance
    Wireless electronics is like pipeless plumbing (porta potties). It can be made to work kinda good enough if necessary, but a pipe is always better
    We need reliable fiber, not crappy wireless

    • by EvilSS ( 557649 )
      Cool story bro. You going to pony up the $24,000 I was quoted to have fiber run down my driveway so I can ditch my 5G home internet?
      • by WarJolt ( 990309 ) on Sunday October 29, 2023 @11:25AM (#63963568)

        I used fixed wireless. This is not mobile wireless. We benchmarked it at about 600mbps down and 300mbps up. I pay for 300mbps symmetric. I believe they are using UWB which requires line of site. I was also told they use a sort of mesh topology to relay the signal. The only problems I've had with connectivity hasn't been related to wireless. It was in the ISP data center.

        • by EvilSS ( 557649 )
          Unfortunately fixed wireless isn't an option for me. The local providers all focus on the more rural areas. My options are pay $24,000 to have fiber run down my driveway (900 ft from the poll at the street) or 5G. The 5G service is unlimited (really unlimited, not fake unlimited, no slow downs after so many GB per month, no extra charges), averages around 250/35, and is $50/mo taxes included. Sure ping times average 30-35ms but that's tolerable.

          I see people spouting crap like MpVpRb. Usually they are the
          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            Can you put a shed at the end of the driveway and get fibre service to the shed? Then run your own fibre down the driveway?

            • by EvilSS ( 557649 )
              No. Besides not owning the property at the end of the driveway (I have an easement across two other parcels) the ISP will only drop to a home or commercial building, not a shed or ground box (I asked about that latter).
              • >the ISP will only drop to a home or commercial building, not a shed or ground box (I asked about that latter

                Presumably they prefer the $24K to doing something sensible that takes no additional effort on their part but doesn't net them $24K.

            • Comment removed based on user account deletion
              • by EvilSS ( 557649 )
                They will not connect to a customer run cable. Again, I already asked. They have to be the ones to run the cable.
                • What about if you provide the conduit, would they use it?

                • They will not connect to a customer run cable. Again, I already asked. They have to be the ones to run the cable.

                  That's clearly *technically* not true, unless they insist on running all the cables inside homes too. Just sayin' ... What difference does it make if they connect to your cable in/outside your home? My provider connects in a box I installed on the outside of my house to cable I ran into the house to a splitter and cables I ran to the various rooms. As long as their to your connection is properly grounded it shouldn't make any difference where it is.

                  • by EvilSS ( 557649 )
                    The difference is they will not do it, no matter what pedantic arguments you throw at them, the answer will still be no.
                    • The difference is they will not do it, no matter what pedantic arguments you throw at them, the answer will still be no.

                      Sure, I get that. Not trying to start a fight. Just sayin' that their "reasons" are disingenuous.

                      Perhaps, as a hold-over from the past, they're concerned that someone else may tap the cable between the drop and your house and get unauthorized service, though that shouldn't really matter anymore now that all the signals are digital and encrypted, etc...

                    • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

                      The difference is they will not do it, no matter what pedantic arguments you throw at them, the answer will still be no.

                      Then the solution is to put in a $100 prefab shed at the end of the driveway and tell them to install it there. Run power to the shed if they require it. Then trench and run a 10-gigabit Ethernet link from there to your house. Done.

                    • This is Slashdot. People will give you 1000 alternative solutions ignoring the ISP's ability to "just say no". Is your provider Nancy Regan ISP Inc?

                    • Sure. I donâ(TM)t own the property at the end of the driveway and the company will only terminate to a residence or a business, not a shed but yea I will get right on that.
            • by PPH ( 736903 )

              Shed? Just set a post and hang a weatherproof box. It's what a lot of rural people do for power, cable and POTS (copper loop). The fiber people don't like that? Offer to introduce them to the state utilities commission.

              Fiber ISPs will probably not serve a piece of customer owned fiber in a ditch or conduit directly from their system. Due to the interference bad termination or cable can cause on their entire system. They can hang their ONT on the post (customer will have to provide a 120V circuit). Then you

          • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

            Unfortunately fixed wireless isn't an option for me. The local providers all focus on the more rural areas. My options are pay $24,000 to have fiber run down my driveway (900 ft from the poll at the street) or 5G.

            Unless you live on a mountain with no soil on top of the solid rock, somebody is trying to con you by about a factor of ten. That's a thousand bucks worth of underground-grade fiber, and you can rent a trencher for a couple hundred bucks per day and you'll only need it for maybe an hour, so under $1k of labor even at California prices. Maybe add a little more if they have to bore *under* the driveway for some reason.

            Basically, that's the kind of quote I'd expect if they just don't want to bother, and are

            • by EvilSS ( 557649 )

              you can rent a trencher for a couple hundred bucks per day and you'll only need it for maybe an hour, so under $1k of labor even at California prices.

              Sure, and I'll have spent $1K running a useless cable since they will not connect to it (I asked about doing this already). And no rock, just clay soil.

              • There's the root of the problem.

                This isn't a technology issue, or an infrastructure one, it's a legislation problem. The fact they can refuse to connect up to a line on your property that by all accounts complies with all local regulations is completely and utterly bullshit. The power and water companies have no such right, I can hire a licensed contractor of my choice to do my work up until the meter.

                This is yet another reason why the last mile of fiber should be municipal.

                • by EvilSS ( 557649 )
                  I don't disagree, but going back to the OP's argument, saying "We should just be doing fiber" is bullshit. What, I should wait until the law makers get it sorted out to have decent internet options?
                  • Not at all, you need to do what you need for yourself in your circumstances but the OP is correct.

                    Fiber is better on every front not just for you the consumer but everyone else as well, the issue is availability and the reason for that is not that we don't have the technology or the resources but simply political will. We did it with electricity and then we did it again with phones but for this, arguably the last communication wire we would have to install in this country for probably a century we are sudd

                    • by EvilSS ( 557649 )
                      So going back to my original reply, you cool subsidizing fiber runs to places like mine? Or places out in the boonies that would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per home? OP is not wrong that fiber is better, they are wrong in their absolutism on the issue. We need a mix of technologies. Fiber is just not feasible for 100% of the population and it never will be.
                    • For most homes, yes, absolutely. You yourself said the line is about 900 feet from your property. If this was a matter of getting power there would no question that you have the right to get it done in a reasonable price. In this era of history I lump internet access right along with electricity, potable water and sewage services. Communications are a vital part of life and a strong case can be made for national and local economic reasons as well as national security.

                      To be clear I don't want a subsidy, i

                    • Also I don't believe we can get to 100%, that's just infeasible but let's just get to say 80-90% and then what to do about the last 10-20% will be a lot easier to figure out.

                      If a house has grid electricity someone got it out there, your power company finds a way to do it profitably, why not an ISP?

                    • by dryeo ( 100693 )

                      Here in BC, my rural area, 10 acre lots, when the phone company was stringing up the fibre, they were running it to everyone who wanted to sign up for fibre, even the cheap 300/300 plan. In town, they're laying fibre to everyone's house pretty well whether you want it or not, seems being the phone company they have easements rights allowing them to dig up your lawn to bury the fibre.
                      So basically if you have phone (landline) service, you can get fibre no matter how remote you are, often using the same poles

                    • by Reeses ( 5069 )

                      Yes. The internet provider should be "subsidizing" those connections from the profits they're making from the easier places to install.

                      That was the same agreement the Bells agreed to back in the 1900s when they were "mandated" to bring a copper pair to every home in America. We can redo that now.

            • 900 ft driveway ... 6 acre lots with really nice houses and septic systems? $24,000 is either the "don't want to" price or a "first install to neighborhood" price. You can't run your own fiber though without also running power to the pole since you need power anywhere you have a signal transition. But you could run a PVC conduit -- don't forget to put a pull-line loop in there. (Talk to an electrician to make sure you use a large enough gauge of stainless steel wire, the weight of the cable to be pulled
              • by EvilSS ( 557649 )
                Nope, they have lines on poles at the end of my driveway and the rest of the street except myself and one neighbor who shares part of my drive has service. And before you ask, he's an additional 700 feet away so "splitting the cost" won't really make sense. Running my own cable isn't an option. Putting aside the fact I don't own the land at the end of the driveway, the company refuses to use lines they don't install (and do go all pedantic like this guy [slashdot.org]) so they won't hook up to a line I run. I asked this a
                • by LT218 ( 2815469 )

                  Clear lines of sight between any of the neighbors' houses and yours and less than 500m distance?

                  Make friends with the neighbor, offer to split their fiber inet costs and setup a point-to-point WiFi bridge. Could probably be done for less than $2k out the door.

                  Something like a UniFi UBB-XG kit should work well if the distance is less than 500m. We've used a few of them at work for sites where running physical lines was cost-prohibitive due to parking lots, crossing streets, etc. They've worked well.

                  If the

                • As an electrical engineer that owns a real estate company I can relate to stubborn utility providers. I have owned land where a provider would hook up to a random pole in the middle of nowhere and situations like yours where you are just stuck. You can have both in the same county under the same laws. The contrast used to shock me, no more. Just trying to provide solutions for under $2k but if they won't work with reasonable accommodations, they won't.

                  I had an uncle that was a developer and an attorn
                • by Bert64 ( 520050 )

                  How does power, water and (if you have it) copper telephone line or cable tv get to your house?
                  Fibre should be treated as a utility, same as the others, it's actually easier/cheaper to run than water or power.

            • If you are paying $1K for day labor in California then you are doing it wrong.
            • The cable and trencher solution works if there are zero issues. But all they have to do is break one pipe or cut one power line or screw up a permit or run into a nasty stretch of rock and it could cost them thousands to fix. Its a lot of risk to sell you a service for $70/month and support forever if/when issues arise.

              • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

                The cable and trencher solution works if there are zero issues. But all they have to do is break one pipe or cut one power line or screw up a permit or run into a nasty stretch of rock and it could cost them thousands to fix.

                And this is why before any construction happens, you call and get the utilities marked (which they are required by law to do at no cost to the homeowner). And permits, in the unlikely event that installing a single buried fiber on private property or in a utility easement would even require permits, would be the same whether you're running 50 feet to a house or 900 feet. Running into rock *might* be a risk, depending on where you are, but usually isn't, and when it is, you would likely already have poles

          • by DewDude ( 537374 )

            I mean my house requires more fiber than that but Verizon was like "no problem". Twice. A temp drop then the final drop.

      • by ranton ( 36917 )

        Cool story bro. You going to pony up the $24,000 I was quoted to have fiber run down my driveway so I can ditch my 5G home internet?

        Wow, not sure what unique challenges make it so expensive for your home, but 5 years ago I was given a quote of about $5k for a home I was planning on buying to run fiber a couple hundred yards. This is in a fairly expensive suburb in the Midwest (most homes $600k-$1M). I knew there was no way I was going to buy a home without wired internet and cable, so I needed to know what I would subtract from my offer. In the end it didn't matter since my wife didn't like the house for other reasons.

        The odd thing was

        • by EvilSS ( 557649 )
          So when my parents owned this property, about 10 years ago, they also asked and the quote was $6K (after the $3K the company would cover). They, unfortunately, didn't do it then. There are not challenges, simple, straight run, clay soil, and they have service at the street already. That's just what they think their labor costs are today.
      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        We have the same problem with other infrastructure. Telephone lines, roads, water and gas pipes, electricity lines, postal delivery.

        All you need is a universal service mandate with the costs spready over all users, and local loop unbundling so that the owner of the line has to make it available to other ISPs at the same cost they charge their own in-house ISP. Then you have universal service and competition to keep prices down.

        It's worked well in Europe, where properly implemented.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday October 29, 2023 @11:11AM (#63963542)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • I just bought a house. Apparently it never had cable, but I'm moving in from 18 years of apartment life and kept what I knew.

        I wish I gave wireless a more serious look. While the cable company gave me a refreshed deal (saving me ~$40 a month from what I was paying), they also had to drill a hole in my floor and run an ugly black wire along the back side of my house. After it was done, I had to come in after them and thread it through hooks under the floor joists so that it wasn't just laying in the dirt li

      • by antdude ( 79039 )

        Cable wins here because cellular coverage sucks in the rural area. Also, no fiber. StarLink is too expensive.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        The way to create competition is to unbundle the last mile. In Europe the cable that runs from the exchange to your house is usually owned by a different company to the one that provides ISP service. Any ISP can pay to access that last mile infrastructure, and pricing has to be the same for everyone.

        So in your example Cox would have to allow other ISPs to use their infrastructure on the same basis that they allow their own in-house ISP to. In fact they would probably have to spin off the infrastructure part

    • Pipes form natural monopolies, so we can't have nice things because that would be socialism.

      • by Rademir ( 168324 )

        > Pipes form natural monopolies

        Not necessarily. My city owns a small-but-growing fiber network, and you can buy service from any of several local ISPs who lease fibers from the city.

    • Find a way to solve the "blood-sucking monopoly" problem that makes cable a never-improving pain in the balls, and you got yourself a deal.
    • by ahziem ( 661857 )
      Many users have simple requirements like video streaming and web surfing that are fully satisfied by FWA, and they don't need to pay more for cable or fiber. FWA can be a cheap way to provide last-mile access. Is $53,000 per user [msn.com] justifiable for fiber?
    • by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Sunday October 29, 2023 @12:50PM (#63963700) Homepage

      We seem to have accepted the tradeoff of choosing portability over performance

      Performance isn't the issue. I tried T-Mobile's 5G home internet briefly and the speeds were fine (most of the time). The main issues were:

      The modem is garbage. Even the most basic features such as reserving static local IP addresses for devices on your home network are absent from the router settings. Attempting to use your own wireless router with their crappy modem results in your network being double NATed.

      The connection is high latency. Online gaming is a miserable experience.

      You're behind carrier-grade NAT, so you're not running any servers (not that you're allowed to anyway, mind you) and it breaks applications which assume you have a normal IPv4 address.

      The TOS is far more weasel-y and restrictive than what you'd get with a wired broadband provider. You're, for example, not allowed to use torrent applications or run servers.

      The service level is deprioritized straight to hell, so if the tower you're using is heavily loaded, your speeds will suffer significantly.

      Finally, at least for me, the service was exactly the same price as Spectrum's cable broadband service, so there's not even any savings to be had. All you get is the satisfaction that you're supporting a different evil telecommunications company. For my needs, it totally wasn't worth it and I went back to cable broadband service.

      • I tried T-Mobile 5G and got 900m/sec as the tower was line of site from my apartment. It was $50/mo uncapped compared to Cox which was $129/mo for the same speed and capped at 1.2TB transfer per month.

        Everything you said is true but not everyone needs those features. If you use the internet for IoT, streaming, and web it is a great value. Heck the latency wasn't that bad for gaming, but certainly not optimal.

        The only reason I went back to Cox was they kept calling me and eventually offered the same price as

      • You're behind carrier-grade NAT

        Does T-Mobile home Internet put both IPv6 and IPv4 behind carrier-grade NAT or only IPv4?

        • by AvitarX ( 172628 )

          It puts both behind it (I think), no ipv6 passthrough allowed.

          If one wants 2 way internet access they'll need a VPN.

        • by Big Boss ( 7354 )

          NAT? No. What they do is refuse to assign anything other than a single /64 to the modem. So you can't actually do much with it if you don't want to use their router box. They then proceed to firewall everything inbound from the internet. So you can't make connections to those addresses anyway. Their box will set up an RA and the v6 network does function, unless you want inbound connections or use vlans etc.. Even Comcast will delegate a /60, and at the moment anyway, a real IPv4.

          v4 is on CGNAT with 464XLAT.

      • by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        All new or growing ISPs have no choice but to put you behind CGNAT, or charge you (a lot) extra for routable IPv4. The only companies that can provide legacy ip to all their customers are the old incumbent ones like comcast/at&t etc because they have large allocations from years back and a customer base that isn't growing.

        This is only going to get worse until we're fully migrated to IPv6.

    • 80% or more and growing of internet access in many European countries is via the cell networks. So it does seem to be the de-facto solution in many places.
    • by AvitarX ( 172628 )

      I switched to T-Mobile for my home.

      It's dramatically better than Comcast cable was.

      With Comcast I was getting 15ms ping or so and had 200/5 speed.

      That 5 was brutal working from home.

      With T-Mobile I get 50/50 reliably and usually 100/80 or so (tested from my phone on wifi), the ping is up to 20-25ms but it's so much more useful.

      The big negative is that it is carrier level NAT and doesn't allow ipv6 passthrough even. That's currently not an issue for me, but if it becomes one I'll need to buy a VPN to get an

    • Completely correct. The advantage with cable Internet is that it already uses the infrastructure already in place for many years. And cable Internet already can do gigabit speed downloads so you can stream even ATSC 3.0 standard 4K video very easily.

      Starting in 2024, Comcast plans to start rolling out DOSCIS 4.0, which offers even more capacity and the ability to do download and upload speeds that are almost the same. DOCSIS 4.0 would be perfect for online gamers who want fast response during gameplay.

  • In the past people opted for Netflix, prime etc but now they too run ads and starting to creep up to cable pricing (without a broadband option)

    • by gmack ( 197796 )
      I have yet to see any ads on Netflix and the price is still nowhere near cable. Even the 4 services I pay for (Netflix, Youtube, Prime, and Curiosity Stream) combined are still less than I would pay to watch anything decent on cable.
    • by ranton ( 36917 )

      They don't run ads on anything but the cheapest monthly plans. Standard Netflix is $15 per month and Premium is $23. Amazon Prime Video membership (without other Prime features) is $9 per month. Nowhere near cable prices.

      Although cable has increased their Internet cost to the point where cutting the cable doesn't matter much if you still use cable for Internet. I pay $122 for Comcast's Gigabit Extra Internet plan, but after my 2 product discount I only pay $60 per month for their Ultimate TV package. This i

    • Netflix and Prime run ads on the ad-supported subscription tier.

  • We were pretty much stuck with Comcast for the first two years at my current place. In that time our service costs more than doubled. We tried calling to see about getting a better rate or modifying our service but they wouldn't do anything for us. Then fiber came down our street and we ditched Concast first chance we got. My wife used to be a social worker and routinely had to deal with Comcast and their predatory practices towards those with low income. Looking forward to their hopefully inevitable declin

    • I just went through the same thing. I even gave Comcast/Xfinity a chance to lower the bill to stay competitive. I told them my primary concern was cost, so somehow through marketing mathematics they decided the best deal they could offer to keep me was to double my speed for a bill that came up about $7 more a month in totality. I asked the customer service representative how Comcast thought that X was less than X+7. After a few seconds of silence, they recognized I wasn't going to speak again until the
  • by paul_engr ( 6280294 ) on Sunday October 29, 2023 @12:40PM (#63963678)
    Comcast IS xfinity, you lazy fuckwits.
    • by PPH ( 736903 )

      It's probably two different companies when the gov't comes around handing out subsidies.

  • $50 for T-Mobile that is faster than my old Xfiniti was at nearly triple the price.
    • For many people who use T-Mobile cellular on their phones, T-Mobile's unlimited home internet service is only $30/month with autopay. And yes, it's often faster than cable, although ping times are slower. The base station can also be moved to new locations at will--without having to tell T-Mobile.
  • by PPH ( 736903 )

    T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon

    Just let me know when they plan on providing service to my neighborhood.

  • The cost and hostile customer service are driving customers away.

  • Many apartments, condos and commercial buildings were built with the network infrastructure contracted to these companies. I would love to know how many COMCAST customers are locked-in like this. The people who live in these buildings are going to see ever increasing prices once they are the only customers left to exploit. In some cases the bill is passed through, it isn't even an option per-unit.
  • TiVo stopped making its 4-tuner Edge for antenna (with 2TB drive) and now only sells (via ChannelMaster!) a 2-tuner model with 512GB storage. This really sucks. Even the Edge for cable no longer works with some cable companies. In all of my searching and trials, no app or other hardware's UI comes close to the convenience of TiVo.
    • Search for "Weaknees tivo", they sell refurb units for the sort of models you're looking for. I just got a Bolt for OTA with 2TB disk, something Tivo won't sell me, and it comes with a lifetime license. I'm pleased with it.
  • It probably has a lot more to do with people finally starting to realize that inflation is much worse than they thought or wanted to believe and they are taking a long look at where their money goes. When the economy is healthy and people aren't worried about making ends meet, they tend not to scrutinize their expenses even though they should. These days so much of the economy is centered around the subscription business model. Hell, there are even subscription services to tell you what subscription service

  • Prices should be based on how much it costs to provide the service. Retain and reward customers who stay with you year in year out. Offer tiers of service along with reasonable package plans. Offer credit for outages, unused services, referrals, and reporting theft.
  • Man, given their amazing customer dis-service, constant price increases, and spotty service, I can't imagine why they might be losing customers!

    I have to work with Telcom "providers" all around the country for my job. The major ones are an absolute joke. AT&T, for instance, literally blocked one of our numbers so we couldn't call them to get support. And that's for a pretty big BUSINESS customer...just imagine what they do to residential folks.

    I say good, I hope every last one of them dies a horrible bu

  • I finally left Comcast when I a fiber provider rolled into my neighborhood offering the internet service I've always wanted.

    10gbps fiber. Bi-directional speed. Low cost. No bandwidth caps.

    I'm sorry/not sorry that Comcast's inferior options have finally started to cause them to lose share. I hope to never be a Comcast customer again as long as I don't live in an area where they're the only "fast" option.

    Good riddance.

    • Sadly, that's not exactly a common experience for many, many Americans, especially in many suburb regions and particularly rural areas.

  • Most of commenters that have access to fiber either live in a city or highly dense enough area to get it. I live in a rural area in Ga. where Windstream is the ONLY wired option @ 25 Mbps for $110/month and y'all complaining about 200 Mbps !!! No Comcast within 20-30 miles of me. We do have Verizon internet box @ 50 Mbps for $25 on Verizon family plan that helps. Charter / Spectrum may be coming to area as they got gov't $$$ and plan to use power poles to run service out our area, hopefully. 300 Mbps for $
  • "Comcast and ,Xfinity"? Xfinity is just a tradename for Comcast.

One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they never have to stop and answer the phone.

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