D.C. Memo: After Another Down Quarter, Comcast Zeroing in on Broadband 'Pain Points'

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Comcast: After Comcast dropped 199,000 broadband subscribers in the first quarter, company executives yesterday spoke about the need to do a better job of addressing consumer pain points and recognizing that price locks and other retention tools will take a few quarters to show their grit in an intensely competitive market. CEO Brian Roberts did not speak until the very end of the one-hour conference call with Wall Street analysts. “Let me first comment on broadband and just add my own view where we're clearly facing some challenges, but as you heard with a lot of passion, the team has a sense of urgency and energy and focus to getting customer pain points resolved,” Roberts said. Philadelphia-based Comcast is the No. 1 broadband ISP in the country, with about 31.6 million customers. Comcast executives acknowledged that returning to broadband subscriber growth would be a challenge when fixed wireless providers, including T-Mobile and Verizon, have been adding nearly 1 million subscribers per quarter. “The competitive environment remains intense,” said David Watson, Comcast’s CEO of Connectivity & Platforms. “They're still marketing very aggressively.” Watson continued to see pressure from fiber. “We’re dealing with that overbuild,” he said. Comcast CFO Jason Armstrong said the company has built a response to fixed wireless that addresses FWA’s most attractive features. “They're not leading with network, they're not leading with speed, they're not leading necessarily with in-home coverage, but they have a pricing construct in terms of simplicity and ease of doing business that has resonated. That's exactly what we're going after, right,” he said. In recent weeks, Comcast rolled out a new offer to new customers: $55 a month for 400Mbps with a five-year price, a free gateway, no data caps, and no annual contract. The company is also tossing in a free mobile line for one year. “While this may take a little time to fully take hold, our history of operational execution success would tell you that, well, sometimes we may not move first, [but] once we get in motion, we do it extremely well,” Roberts said.