Comcast won’t give new speed boost to Internet users who don’t buy TV service
Comcast keeps losing TV subscribers, but it has a new way to fight cord cutting. Jon Brodkin - 4/30/2018
As streaming video continues to chip away at cable TV subscriber numbers, Comcast is making some of its Internet speed increases available only to customers that pay for both Internet and video service.
Last week, Comcast announced speed increases for customers in Houston and the Oregon/SW Washington areas. The announcement headlines were "Comcast increases Internet speeds for some video customers."
Customers with 60Mbps Internet download speeds are being upped to 150Mbps; 150Mbps subscribers are going to 250Mbps; and 250Mbps subscribers are getting a raise to 400Mbps or 1Gbps.
Comcast says speed increases will kick in automatically without raising the customers' monthly bills—but only if they subscribe to certain bundles that include both Internet and TV service.
"Cord cutters are not invited to the [speed increase] party," the Houston Chronicle wrote. "Only those who bundle Internet with cable television and other services... will see their speeds go up at no extra charge."
Presumably, Internet-only customers can get the new speeds by paying more or by bundling their Internet subscriptions with video.
Cord cutters take a toll
Comcast lost 96,000 video customers and saw video revenue decrease 0.8 percent, "primarily due to a decline in the number of residential customers," the company said in its latest quarterly earnings results last week.
Comcast, the nation's largest cable company, now has 26.2 million Internet customers and 22.3 million video customers. The company keeps adding broadband subscribers while losing video subscribers.
Comcast's net loss in video subscribers was 151,000 in calendar year 2017, according to Leichtman Research Group. Industry-wide, the top pay-TV providers representing 95 percent of the market lost 1.5 million video subscribers in 2017, nearly double the loss in 2017, Leichtman wrote.
The net subscriber loss for the top six cable companies in 2017 was 660,245, leaving the six companies with a combined 48.1 million video subscribers.
It isn't just on-demand video services like Netflix and Amazon that are taking customers away from cable. Linear TV services delivered over the Internet like Sling TV and DirecTV Now are also surging. Sling TV added 711,000 customers in 2017 to bring its total to 2.2 million. DirecTV Now added 888,000 customers in 2017, and they weren't just people switching from the DirecTV satellite service. DirecTV's satellite TV lost 554,000 customers in the same period...
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