Comcast CEO talks competition, asserts company is ‘tech-driven’

Can cable get its groove back? It’s a common question as operators wade their way through a sea of fiber and fixed wireless access (FWA) competition. Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts talked about where the company stands in the broadband space and how it sees itself. Roberts described Comcast as “more of a consumer innovation and technology driven company.” Analyst Craig Moffett asked Roberts to delve into the elephant in the room – broadband. Growth in that ailing segment didn’t get any better in the first quarter, when Comcast lost 65,000 broadband subscribers. Can Comcast eventually return to subscriber growth? Part of that, according to Roberts, depends on how the company is “choosing to react” to competitors like fixed wireless. So far, the FWA market has been dominated by T-Mobile and Verizon, with AT&T also getting into the space with its Internet Air product. Comcast chose to respond via advertising, where it boasts the value of Xfinity when streaming on multiple devices, for example.