Comcast's Broadband Monopoly Helps it Buck Cord Cutting Trend Comcast's latest quarterly earnings report indicates that Comcast managed to buck the overall cord cutting trend by adding 80,000 basic video subscribers during the fourth quarter. The company also continued to gobble up DSL customers frustrated by a lack of telco upgrades, adding 385,000 broadband subscribers on the quarter. Comcast's ability to marginally buck the cord cutting trend while absolutely demolishing lagging telcos on broadband subscriber additions are, of course, directly connected.

With AT&T and Verizon effectively hanging up on millions of unwanted DSL customers, these frustrated customers are heading to Comcast, where it's cheaper to sign up for a bundle of television and broadband, than just broadband alone. For millions of these frustrated and neglected telco cast offs, Comcast is their only option if they want broadband speeds faster than 3-6 Mbps. That doesn't mean those customers will stick around as TV customers. Nor does it mean that cord cutting is overhyped or non-existent. What it does mean is that Comcast enjoys a monopoly in many broadband markets and is using that power to shove these users toward bundles. In many markets, TV and broadband bundled can be $20 less on promotion than just broadband alone. Many of those customers may find themselves cutting the TV component once the full rates kick in. Especially this year, as a flood of new live streaming alternatives from AT&T, Hulu, Amazon and others begin to flood the market. That's of course where Comcast clearly hopes its usage caps and its decision to exempt its own stream service from said caps will help keep these users captive. Even if these users ultimately realize that streaming gives them greater flexibility at a lower price point once initial promotions expire, Comcast still gets its pound of flesh courtesy of completely arbitrary and unnecessary usage caps, again only made possible by the lack of competition Comcast faces in the lion's share of its broadband markets.







News Jump California Defends Its Net Neutrality Law; AT&T's Traffic Up 20% Despite Data Traffic Actually Being Down; + more news Are The Comcast-Charter X1 Talks Dead In The Water?; AT&T May Offer Phone Plans With Ads For Discounts; + more news Europe's Top Court: Net Neutrality Rules Bar Zero Rating; ViacomCBS To Rebrand CBS All Access As Paramount+; + more news Verizon To Buy Reseller TracFone For $7B; 5G Not The Competitive Threat To Cable Many Thought It Would Be; + more news MS.Wants Records From AT&T On $300M Project; Google Fiber Outages In Austin, Houston, Other Texan Cities; + more news States With The Biggest Decreases In Speed; AT&T Hopes You'll Forget Its Fight Against Accurate Maps; + more news AT&T's CEO Has A Familiar $olution To US Broadband Woes; EarthLink Files Suit Against Charter; + more news 5G Doesn't Live Up To Hype, AT&T's 5G Slower Than Its 4G; Cord-Cutting Now In 37% of Broadband Households; + more news FCC Cited False Broadband Data Despite Warnings; ZTE, Huawei Replacement Cost Is $1.87B, But Only $1B Allocated; + more Cogeco Rejects Altice USA's Atlantic Broadband Bid; AT&T Is Astroturfing The FCC In Support Of Trump Attack; + more news ---------------------- this week last week most discussed

Most recommended from 28 comments

The Engineer

join:2015-04-02

Munster, IN 2 recommendations The Engineer Member Comcast gives basic video away Pretty much anybody with Comcast internet can get basic video for free. realbbbb

join:2017-01-26 2 recommendations realbbbb Member Breakdown of video subs? I'd really like to see some a breakdown on the number of new video subs that Comcast had reported for the past couple of quarters. How many of them are on actual cable packages (i.e. Digital Economy & above) as compared to people like me who switched from Internet only -> Internet Plus (which includes Limited Basic & HBO) solely because they were given a promo rate that was much cheaper than Internet alone? They never release this data so the figure of 80K new subs is somewhat meaningless, esp compared to say DirecTV who has no such comparable package.