Despite a slowdown in the number of customers paying for cable and high-speed Internet subscriptions, Comcast reported a 17.4 percent increase in net income, to $1.44 billion, in the three months that ended March 31.

The solid earnings announced on Wednesday were partly the result of higher cable bills for 72 percent of Comcast’s subscribers. The company reported $3.07 billion in operating income and $15.3 billion in revenue, increases of 11.2 percent and 2.9 percent from the same quarter last year.

Still, signs that Comcast may have reached saturation in its core cable and Internet subscription business were apparent. The company lost 60,000 cable subscribers, 62 percent more than it lost in the first quarter of 2012. New broadband subscriptions fell 1 percent to 433,000, and Comcast gained 211,000 phone service customers, a 28 percent increase from last year.

Taken collectively, the country’s largest cable provider still had a 3.2 percent gain in new customers in the quarter, or 583,000 total subscribers, mostly because of the popularity of Comcast’s bundled offer, which includes Internet, phone and cable service at a reduced price.