Comcast’s Broadband Growth Slows While Pandemic-Hit NBCUniversal Rebounds

Comcast said it added fewer broadband customers than in recent quarters, a slowdown that comes after record growth during the height of the coronavirus lockdowns. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said the company's Peacock streaming service and its broadband business were two of Comcast’s top priorities for the year ahead. The company added 212,000 broadband subscribers in the fourth quarter 2022, down 61 percent from the same quarter in 2021. Its cellphone business, Xfinity Mobile, added 312,000 customers, while Comcast’s pay-TV business continued to shrink, losing 373,000 subscribers. Cable chief Dave Watson said the broadband slowdown was largely due to fewer people changing homes. Even with the slowdown in broadband subscriber growth, the Comcast Cable segment, comprising the broadband, cable-TV, landline and mobile units, made up the bulk of revenue with $16.41 billion, up 4.5 percent from the year-earlier period. Comcast’s results since the third quarter show how consumer habits changed drastically at the height of the pandemic lockdowns—when Americans relied heavily on home broadband connections for work and school—and are now slowly going back to normal. Industry analysts are forecasting cable broadband providers will continue to face pressure and see slowing growth as telecommunications competitors such as AT&T build out their broadband strategies.