Comcast’s CFO Jason Armstrong said that two years ago the company used to increase its broadband footprint by passing 800,000 more homes per year, but now it’s pacing at around 1.2 million new homes passed yearly.
Speaking on the company’s third quarter 2024 earnings call, Armstrong reiterated what Comcast executives have been saying for several quarters now — that fixed wireless access (FWA) and fiber are its two key competitors in terms of technology.
During Fierce Networks’ recent Broadband Nation Expo, Jason Livingood, VP of Technology Policy, Products and Standards with Comcast, said the company has been focused on building in rural areas over the last couple of years, and Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) grants will drive even more. “Luckily, we’ve got teams that have experience with underground and aerial,” said Livingood.
He said hybrid fiber coax (HFC) is only deployed in greenfield areas “in a small number of cases” where it just makes more sense with other DOCSIS infrastructure nearby.
While Comcast is dealing with fiber competitors — and deploying some fiber, itself — the company is also facing pressure from fixed wireless access (FWA) encroachers.
They also talked about loss of the Affordable Connectivity Program…
The analysts at New Street Research estimate that Comcast lost 14,000 ACP subs in the first quarter. And Comcast says in addition to the 32,000 subs it lost in Q3, it also counted 64,000 ACP losses that it anticipates in the fourth quarter. In all, it appears that Comcast will lose about 110,000 ACP subs in total or about 8% of its total ACP base of 1.4 million.