How Comcast is trying to turn around its internet customer exodus

Miami Herald

19 hours ago

Comcast, the Philadelphia-born media giant with roots in cable television, for years has been losing more cable customers than it's been adding. And more recently, with leaders citing "a highly competitive environment," it's also lost broadband internet customers.
So this year, the company set in motion multiple new strategies to court consumers.
In the broadband and mobile businesses, that meant offering a national pricing structure, five-year price guarantees, a free mobile line for a year, and unlimited data packages for mobile customers.
The company also honed in on customer service, making it possible to buy products in fewer steps, and using Google AI to manage customer interactions, Comcast president Mike Cavanagh said in a quarterly earnings call late last month. He boasted "more than a 20% improvement in purchase conversion rates."
Comcast isn't facing a unique challenge. Cable on the whole is "in terminal decline" across operators, said consumer technology industry analyst Avi Greengart, but broadband "was propping them up." Now, he said, "that is also starting to decline due to higher competition, particularly from fixed wireless."
"Comcast is trying to find a route that protects themselves from that," Greengart said.
Despite the customer losses in the most recent quarter, leaders at Comcast, which has 14,000 employees in the Philadelphia region and 8,500 at its Center City headquarters, were upbeat about the future of their internet business.
"Our goal for all the actions we've taken is to build a loyal customer base that churns less and values our services more," Cavanagh said. "Customers are responding to the simplicity and power of these changes, with roughly half of our eligible new customer connects choosing our five-year price guarantee this quarter."
Comcast is also unlike the others in cable and internet, thanks to additional business segments like theme parks and movie studios. Those aren't easy businesses, Greengart said, but they're "hit-driven" and currently benefiting from a new movie and Orlando theme park.
And more changes taking place in rapid succession.
Within one week in July, Comcast made several significant announcements: a partnership with T-Mobile to bring wireless services to more business customers; the board members for its upcoming spinoff of several media brands including USA Network, CNBC, MSNBC, and E!; and the launch of Stream Store, where its cable and internet customers can buy cheap streaming service bundles.
"There are a lot of moving pieces at Comcast at the moment‚" wrote Craig Moffett, a telecom-industry analyst who has watched Comcast for years, in his take on the company's quarterly earnings report. "But most of those pieces are moving in the right direction."
These moves line up with a growth strategy that pulls away from cable, with internet as the linchpin.
Which Comcast services are growing?
Comcast reported 201,000 fewer residential broadband customers in its most recent quarter, making for 594,000 fewer over the course of one year.
Still, those numbers are a small percentage of the whole. More than 31.5 million U.S. homes and businesses get their broadband internet from Comcast and it remains the largest home internet provider in the country.
The company has been betting on growth in that demand, pointing to entertainment as the reason for a majority of internet use.
The mobile phone business gained customers - 378,000 more in the second quarter, driven in part by that free line offer. That customer base is still smaller than internet and even cable, with about 8.5 million total wireless lines.
With the recently announced T-Mobile deal, which targets business users, the number of wireless users seems poised to grow more when that takes effect next year. (Comcast's residential wireless services use Verizon's network.)
Wireless is a competitive space, too, Greengart acknowledged, "but this is an area that really fits with the cable operators' existing business models." Comcast doesn't have to operate the wireless networks but already has access to a large customer base, he said. And when customers' devices are set to switch data use from mobile networks to WiFi when available, the cost to Comcast becomes lower.
Cable, meanwhile, continues to drop off.
That customer base shrunk by 751,000 in the first half of 2025, dipping below 12 million. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said those declines are expected to continue.
"There was a time when Comcast's media business was considered a drag on their consolidated results" Moffett wrote. "Well … today, media might still be viewed as a challenged business, but it is almost certainly viewed as being preferable to cable. Anything is viewed as preferable to cable."
A future without cable is conceivable, Greengart said, if it becomes too costly for providers to justify.
Despite the decline, Comcast still brings cable into about 11.7 million homes.
Selling pro-basketball and family vacations
When talking about Comcast's "core six growth drivers" in the quarterly earnings call, CFO Jason Armstrong did not mention cable.
But that's not to say Comcast is stepping back from the business of bringing moving pictures to TV screens.
In addition to broadband, wireless, and business services, Armstrong listed three other "growth" areas: parks, streaming, and studios. Those three still bring in much less revenue than the cable and internet businesses. But they've made splashy moves.
The Peacock streaming service isn't yet profitable, but it's getting closer and will be adding NBA games to its menu in the fall. And with its newest theme park, Epic Universe in Orlando, the company is building out what Cavanagh called "a true weeklong destination" to compete with the nearby Disney resort.
"Not many companies on the planet could take the decade it took to build maybe the finest theme park in the world," CEO Brian Roberts said on the recent earnings call.
Those six "growth" businesses now bring in nearly 60% of Comcast's revenue, Roberts noted. That will increase to about 65% after the company spins off its cable network entities into a separate company, Versant.
If trends continue, Roberts predicted, those six segments will eventually make up 70% of Comcast's revenue within a few years.
"We're pivoting; our products are exciting," Roberts said. "And the way we tell that story to the consumer with some of the team that we're assembling, I think you're going to see that really resonate."
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