Comcast President Bemoans Broadband Customer Losses: 'We Are Not Winning' (arstechnica.com) 61
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Comcast executives apparently realized something that customers have known and complained about for years: The Internet provider's prices aren't transparent enough and rise too frequently. This might not have mattered much to cable executives as long as the total number of subscribers met their targets. But after reporting a net loss of 183,000 residential broadband customers in Q1 2025, Comcast President Mike Cavanagh said the company isn't "winning in the marketplace" during an earnings call today. The Q1 2025 customer loss was over three times larger than the net loss in Q1 2024.
While customers often have few viable options for broadband and the availability of alternatives varies widely by location, Comcast faces competition from fiber and fixed wireless ISPs. "In this intensely competitive environment, we are not winning in the marketplace in a way that is commensurate with the strength of the network and connectivity products that I just described," Cavanagh said. "[Cable division CEO] Dave [Watson] and his team have worked hard to understand the reasons for this disconnect and have identified two primary causes. One is price transparency and predictability and the other is the level of ease of doing business with us. The good news is that both are fixable and we are already underway with execution plans to address these challenges." [...]
Cavanagh said that Comcast plans to make changes in marketing and operations "with the highest urgency." This means that "we are simplifying our pricing construct to make our price-to-value proposition clearer to consumers across all broadband segments," he said. Comcast last week announced a five-year price guarantee for broadband customers who sign up for a new package. Comcast said customers will get a "simple monthly price starting as low as $55 per month," without having to enter a contract, giving them "freedom and flexibility to cancel at any time without penalty." The five-year guarantee also comes with one year of Xfinity Mobile at no charge, Comcast said. [...] Additional offers are in the works, Cavanagh said. "We are not done. Providing more value to our customers with less complexity and friction is a top priority and you will see our go-to-market approach continue to evolve over the coming months," he said. Comcast investors shouldn't expect an immediate turnaround, though. "We anticipate that it will take several quarters for our new approach to gain traction and impact the business in a meaningful way," Cavanagh said.
While customers often have few viable options for broadband and the availability of alternatives varies widely by location, Comcast faces competition from fiber and fixed wireless ISPs. "In this intensely competitive environment, we are not winning in the marketplace in a way that is commensurate with the strength of the network and connectivity products that I just described," Cavanagh said. "[Cable division CEO] Dave [Watson] and his team have worked hard to understand the reasons for this disconnect and have identified two primary causes. One is price transparency and predictability and the other is the level of ease of doing business with us. The good news is that both are fixable and we are already underway with execution plans to address these challenges." [...]
Cavanagh said that Comcast plans to make changes in marketing and operations "with the highest urgency." This means that "we are simplifying our pricing construct to make our price-to-value proposition clearer to consumers across all broadband segments," he said. Comcast last week announced a five-year price guarantee for broadband customers who sign up for a new package. Comcast said customers will get a "simple monthly price starting as low as $55 per month," without having to enter a contract, giving them "freedom and flexibility to cancel at any time without penalty." The five-year guarantee also comes with one year of Xfinity Mobile at no charge, Comcast said. [...] Additional offers are in the works, Cavanagh said. "We are not done. Providing more value to our customers with less complexity and friction is a top priority and you will see our go-to-market approach continue to evolve over the coming months," he said. Comcast investors shouldn't expect an immediate turnaround, though. "We anticipate that it will take several quarters for our new approach to gain traction and impact the business in a meaningful way," Cavanagh said.
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You simply have to wait 5 years and everybody will have nice factory jobs like the 1950's and everyone will be cool like the Fonz.
Stop being shitty. (Score:5, Insightful)
Quit playing games with your customers, specifically "Pricing Roulette" with your new customer deals that current customers aren't eligible for. Nobody likes to be the wallet getting soaked while you try to bilk other people into the same game with a better deal. Make your price be your price, and if you can't compete on that price then maybe that should tell you something about your operation.
Quit screwing around with offering OMG MEGA DOWNLOAD SPEED that nobody can actually achieve on their wireless devices that are predominantly used, while limiting upload bandwidth to what was awesome 20 years ago and causing video conferencing to take a crap if you dare have two or more users on the connection.
Quit being a shitty provider that people only use at last resort because there's no competition. It should inform you where you stand if one of your markets gets a new competitor and everyone with a clue runs away from you as fast as possible - I know I would if any of the fiber operators in my city would string some fiber up into my neighborhood.
Fuck Comcast.
Re:Stop being shitty. (Score:4, Funny)
Re: Stop being shitty. (Score:2)
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I switched to T-Mobile with all of its problems (carrier level NAT and no IPv6 passthrough even) because Comcast was closer to triple the price to get 20mbps up.
I couldn't work remotely with their 200/6 plan that was cheap.
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Quit playing games with your customers, specifically "Pricing Roulette" with your new customer deals that current customers aren't eligible for. Nobody likes to be the wallet getting soaked while you try to bilk other people into the same game with a better deal. Make your price be your price, and if you can't compete on that price then maybe that should tell you something about your operation.
Quit screwing around with offering OMG MEGA DOWNLOAD SPEED that nobody can actually achieve on their wireless devices that are predominantly used, while limiting upload bandwidth to what was awesome 20 years ago and causing video conferencing to take a crap if you dare have two or more users on the connection.
Quit being a shitty provider that people only use at last resort because there's no competition. It should inform you where you stand if one of your markets gets a new competitor and everyone with a clue runs away from you as fast as possible - I know I would if any of the fiber operators in my city would string some fiber up into my neighborhood.
Fuck Comcast.
This is really a problem with your countries advertising laws... the fact you're permitted to lie in ads.
In the UK, if you advertise a price, that price must be available to all customers. No "based on eligibility" or other such crap. The advertised price must be the price I can get the product or service for. Same with speeds, the UK broadband industry got smacked down for advertising unrealistic speeds a few years back. Nothing in the US will improve until you put some actual advertising standards in p
It's stupidly expensive (Score:2)
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Moving from 300 to 1000mbps is noticable.
Probably less so if I went up to 4000 though. Would need to upgrade all my local network.
It's an interesting time when residential internet speeds are faster than standard consumer network equipment.
Re: It's stupidly expensive (Score:2)
I switched to fiber the moment it came to town. My bill is the same as it was but Iâ(TM)m getting 5gb/5gb with no caps. Itâ(TM)s hard to feel bad for Comcast.
Google Fiber (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would anyone use Comcast if there is Google Fiber. Which has been a steady $70 for 1gpbs for like 10 years with no price increses, and I respect that.
Re:Google Fiber (Score:4, Insightful)
As a Comcast customer, if there was literally any other provider I could use that wasn't named "Starlink" I would. But:
- my neighborhood has no fiber, even though fiber providers exist in the city.
- my neighborhood has no PSTN service, even though that service obviously exists in the city, but my neighborhood is a small street of 7 houses which were built about 8 years ago, and the contractor didn't put in any PSTN service in any of the houses.
- my neighborhood is in a hilly geography, and the house was built with foil-backed insulation, so the only cellular service we reliably get is standing in the driveway, so LTE isn't going to get it done.
Comcast is the only answer available currently. I got real excited last year when I saw a contractor putting fiber on the poles on the main road, but it turns out it was a municipal fiber run for the fire station up the hill due to the exact conditions I just described.
Basically the only other answer would be Starlink, and I'm not giving Musk a single damn cent because he's even more of a chud than the chuds running Comcast.
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External LTE antenna?
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Have one. Getting it pointed at a cell mast for sufficient signal gain has been problematic due to a forest between me and that cell mast, and the cell mast being at lower elevation causing me to point the antenna at a downward angle through those trees.
That thing is the only reason I have working LTE in my home office for if Comcast cakes it's pants, and the reception is basically good enough to get some web pages (i.e. inform Comcast that they've caked their pants) and that's about it.
My home is a "chall
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What viperdaenz said. I have Comcast and Verizon available, but no way I'll deal with either of those robber baron criminals.
Cell signal drops rather suddenly right at my house. Additionally the house is aluminum sided, so inside the house cell is dead. So, I bought a "booster", more properly called (in radio terms) a repeater. I forget which one I have, but it works like a charm.
I didn't bother mounting the outdoor antenna outdoors. The kit came with a suction-cup window mount and I have good signal with t
Re: Google Fiber (Score:2)
Very similar situation here. But there are fixed wireless ISPs in the area. It works even with the hilly geography. Sometimes a tree will grow too high, and the antenna has to be repointed.
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Ok, anonymous coward. I'll go ahead and abandon my principles for a fucking internet connection.
Go jump up your own ass and die.
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A couple years ago Google Fiber went in on my street. Spectrum was playing all sorts of games at something like $100/mo for asymmetric bandwidth, and it would go off randomly in the middle of the night for sometimes hours. I switched over to Google Fiber and it's been a steady $70 or so for gigabit, barely ever fails, and runs a lot better.
When I called to drop Spectrum, suddenly they offered to upgrade me somewhat and drop my price down to $39.95 a month. I asked them why, if they had that service, I hadn'
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Do they still offer the cheaper service where you moved to, or are they illegally abusing a monopoly?
Only offering a cheaper price where there are alternatives is monopoly abuse.
Re:Google Fiber (Score:4, Interesting)
All to late though. If they didn't use vender lock-in (I am looking at you Motorola) for their cable boxes or at least TRY to make the cable card relevant, it might of been different. Its just WAY to late now and they are better off moving to a straight internet provider at this point.
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Cable TV as a service is dead. Satellite service might as well be dead, except for remote areas, and even then it's threatened (maybe) by the likes of Starlink (whatever you might think of Musk). In most areas, cellular network service might do well enough. In reasonably urbanized areas there is going to be either cable or fiber infrastructure there, if there is a will. Of course, if you're out in the middle of nowhere in Montana you're still going to be screwed on network access unless, again, something li
Americans are getting screwed big time (Score:5, Interesting)
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We absolutely are getting screwed. Internet connection providers are either monopoly or duopoly in America. Providers are for-profit companies. IMHO, Internet connection is practically essential to life these days, and providers should be regulated, and non-profit, open-books.
Problem is, and Comcast is a great example: Comcast and others have been around for a long time providing TV and movie channels. They figured out how to tack Internet connection onto their existing cable infrastructure. So it looks lik
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Why is it so that it costs whooping 55 usd while in europe the connection costs 10-20 bucks, no matter wherher it's optic fibers or dsl, or even mobile
Greed and regulatory capture. In other words, corruption on a massive scale. Land of the Free (to victimize the public for more money)
what about dropping the caps? (Score:3)
what about dropping the caps?
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what about dropping the caps?
LOL, no. What is being said is that they feel their efforts at monopolizing are not as successful as they have been in the past... so they need to put more effort into ensuring that you can't use anyone else. Customers that have a choice are semi-random in their choices. Their profit goals need tight forecasts which are only possible in a monopoly style situation.
Catering to the customer is the VERY last thing they will try... but I suspect they would rather go out of business entirely rather than give the
Voted the worst company in the USA... (Score:2)
Translation (Score:3)
Our business model of treating people like serfs is failing because people are putting a higher price on their time and dignity.
Light bulb or dim bulb? Or dark (money) bulb? (Score:5, Insightful)
Comcast executives also apparently didn't want to realize all of the dark money they've poured into anti-municipal-broadband bills they've been sponsoring all over the country because competition is, apparently, hard. Comcast President Mike Cavanagh would rather legislate or litigate competition out of the way rather than give everyone in the country access to affordable, usable, decent broadband. So there's that too. I would highly recommend against giving Comcast any of your money unless you have no other connectivity alternatives. But then there appear to be lots of big companies using that same playbook. My heart doesn't exactly weep for them.
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Ha, yes - they bribed (for lack of a better term) to provide a local monopoly on cable and internet, and in return paid monopoly fees, which were passed on to consumers. I remember the fees being about the same cost as cable itself, but it probably varied by area. They were highly undercutting prices where they weren't a monopoly as well, but here you paid way more. So yeah, go fuck yourselves, Comcast. They also failed against competition when it arrived (WiMax, cell 5g. fiber to the home). They offer the
Fuck Comcast! (Score:5, Insightful)
I had Adelphia before they fell apart and were bought by Comcast. Anytime I called Adelphia about an outage I got a credit. Once Comcast bought them the reliability got much shittier and I didn't get any credit for downtime. Then the price increases started. After that, they started taking away things like Usenet. Then the ever increasing prices. Oh, and that awesome customer service. I likened their customer service to be about as good as Cambodia under Pol Pot. Did I mention the constant price increases?
My father was stuck with Comcast and it was even worse for him. The area he lived in had really old cable infrastructure. The techs told him how bad the lines were. But they also told him that Comcast refused to replace any of it.
When a local company put fiber in my neighborhood I switched immediately. Apparently everyone else did as every house in my neighborhood had a sign in their front yard that they had switched. My monthly cost was less than half of what Comcast was and for higher speed. There's been one $5 price increase in ten years and two scheduled outages for maintenance in that time. There was more downtime with Comcast every month than that.
The problem with Comcast isn't bad advertising or opaque pricing. It's that and everything else about the company.
Shocking... (Score:3)
When Ziply Fiber came into town, gave it a shot. Never looked back. 2Gig symmetric plain old internet for very reasonable prices. Coax just can't handle it.
Maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
trying not to be the most hated company in america would help
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Yes, of course that would help. But that would require them to be something other than themselves. Surely there is a some other way?
I bet they suffering (Score:2)
I left them 3 years ago because it cost $150/month to get 15 mbps up
As shitty as my T-Mobile carrier level NAT is, I'll take the 75/50 real life access over the 500/15 contact was offering me for triple the price. I'll pay for a VPN to avoid the nat if the need arises.
Comcast is a terrible company (Score:3)
Some time ago tallied up all the line item costs for a single pots voice line with all of these ridiculous add on fees and forced equipment rentals that keep getting aggressively hiked and it was just north of $90 for the single voice line.
Comcast has allowed itself to become fat and overrun with bean counters chasing ARPU with gusto and now it is in the finding out phase as tiny operators armed with ditch witches eat their lunch. Likely never getting back the subs they are losing.
Lots of Sherlocks (Score:2)
This is the #2 Clueless Plutocrat entry under Musk's "Why does everybody hate me?"
Starting at 55/month? (Score:2)
Yikes! Our all in price for fiber (1000/1000 to the house, 10Gbs shared across 40 houses), including local phone is $10/month. Granted we are in Sweden, but there is no subsidy here. Just a competitive environment.
You need a focus group? (Score:1)
County lady pays $347 per month (Score:2)
Milking it (Score:3)
Cable companies were the one and only landline infrastructure with a big head start in true broadband (IE not counting DSL) to homes. Our small rural town, like most towns, has had cable TV for decades. So when the internet came along, and they very begrudgingly began to support internet (and thus start losing regular cable subscribers to Netflix and the like), they realized they had a cash cow on their hands.
Ours gouged terribly with their plans. They coupled data caps with speed, so you had to pay for more speed than you needed in order to not exceed the data cap - which then triggered very expensive overages. I was paying $115 a month for 300 Mbps in order to have enough data to not go over the limit each month with our family.
Now, not just one but two companies have come into town and brought fiber. So of course everyone (myself included) left the cable company in droves. They reduced prices but it was too little too late.
These cable companies have purposefully gouged customers who now totally despise their brands for what they have done, and they are paying the price. In reality I don't think they really care - they have made their fortunes and that money has gone to whoever / whatever and they are content. They have already "won", and now it's just a matter of how much of the last-mile internet pie they get for the long-run. I guess that wasn't a bad business decision, because the writing has always been on the wall that the last-mile options would greatly increase and no one would be able to monopolize it like cable companies monopolized both their cable and internet access for that decade or so.
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"Fiercely Competitive" (Score:2)
Since when is having 1, MAYBE 2 competitors with a similar product and 1 or 2 competitors with a substantially inferior product (wireless offerings do not compete in bandwidth, signal consistency, or latency) considered a "fiercely competitive environment"?
Lays has 872 competitors for my potato chip dollars in my grocery store alone.
Compete better (Score:2)
I live in an area where Comcast, a fiber provider, and the major wireless companies all compete. Reliability is pretty much the same across the board, and I have had them all over periods of time in the past 5 years.
While Comcast does offer the cheapest option (the all but hidden NOW $30 plan), it is also the slowest. To get to a competitive speed with the other providers, the price point is⦠shockingly the same, give or take 5 dollars (not counting multi-line discounts).
I had them when the promo
No matter how badly we treat customers, (Score:1)
They still leave.
https://chatgpt.com/share/680a... [chatgpt.com]
Here is a curated list of 50 articles and posts highlighting the challenges customers have faced when attempting to cancel Comcast/Xfinity services. These sources range from personal anecdotes to broader analyses, offering a comprehensive view of the issue: ([Effective Guide to Canceling Xfinity/Comcast Subscription - ScribeUp](https://www.scribeup.io/blog/how-to-cancel-a-xfinitycomcast-subscription-a-guide-for-members?utm_source=chatgpt.com))
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### **News A
Ricidulous (Score:2)
I don't know what price transparency is. I know what; "these prices are too damn high!" is though.
If Charter want to actually improve their service and the retention that might bring, and let's be honest we know they don't fucking care at all, they will provide more product for less dollars.
Don't tell us that we're getting 200 channels, when the channels are just triplicated. Don't tell us about 600+Mbps internet when the upload is an abysmal 30Mbps. Don't give us dogshit service at triple the price and bla
still too complicated (Score:2)
we are going to make the plans simple
oh its about time!
5 year price lock in with xfinity mobile included
Thats still too complicated.
We Keep Raising Prices--and People Leave? (Score:2)
Comcast is too expensive (Score:1)
I left Comcast because they were too expensive.
I went to TMobile... it's wireless, fast, and I've had a lot less downtime than I had with Comcast.
Comcast was up to $95 a month for *nothing* but a basic line with signs they were going to $102 soon.
I'm paying $55 a month (and it would be $50 if I let them do a direct draw from my bank account).
most hated (Score:2)
Most hated company in the US. I wonder why they are not winning?