Comcast Introduces Its Mobile Service (Apr 6, 2017)

Comcast today finally unveiled the wireless service it’s been working on for years off the back of a long-standing agreement to use the Verizon Wireless network as the underlying carrier. It should be a compelling offering for at least some customers, especially the premium 25% or so of its base to whom Comcast will offer preferential pricing. However, the unlimited offering caps out at 20GB per month before throttling kicks in, whereas the traditional carriers’ throttling kicks in at higher points and only in times of congestion, making Comcast’s unlimited in name only. WiFi is a major selling point from Comcast’s perspective, but I’m very skeptical that it’ll be a big part of users’ experience, given how few hotspots Comcast actually has in places where people spend time out of residential neighborhoods, and the fact that WiFi is often now slower rather than faster than LTE. Comcast is going to keep costs down by selling online and in its existing stores and marketing through existing channels, as well as keeping bad debt expense down by marketing to existing customers who pay their bills on time and offering only auto-billing on credit cards. Comcast will likely sell this service to up to 10% of its base in the next couple of years, which will be a nice boost to its revenues and profits, but will make only a tiny dent in the overall US wireless market – 10% penetration of its broadband base would be just 2.5 million customers, which is less than the number of new customers the big four carriers added last quarter alone.

via Comcast

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• Comcast
• Verizon

• Competition
• Mobile
• MVNOs
• Wireless

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