Comcast CEO looking to expand global reach

After four decades of snapping up U.S. cable companies, then acquiring the news-and-entertainment giant NBC Universal Inc. in 2011, Comcast is ready to take on the planet.

"The new technologies make it a flat world," said Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, referring to the best-selling book The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Friedman. "If you have the content and you have the technology and you have the scale . . . and you have the brands and the credibility, there are tremendous opportunities." The world, in Roberts' view, is getting smaller, and international sales could be one of Comcast's fastest-growing segments over the next five to 10 years. It won't come in the traditional Comcast way, through the acquisition of hard-line cable-TV systems. More likely, it will happen through a reenergized NBCUniversal.