Comcast

In the second quarter of 2021, Comcast added 354,000 broadband subscribers, its highest ever for a second-quarter performance. NBCUniversal’s streaming service, Peacock, has 54 million sign-ups and more than 20 million monthly active accounts. Comcast, which doesn’t split out free and paid users, reported 42 million sign-ups across the US in the first quarter of 2021. Comcast’s cable revenue came in at $16 billion, up 10.9% from a year ago.

Comcast continues to shift its emphasis from being a cable TV company to being a digital company. Comcast has: 19 million cable subscribers, a loss of 491,000 since December; 31 million broadband internet subscribers; a gain of 461,000; and 42 million sign-ups to the streaming platform Peacock, a jump of 9 million. Comcast sells something that has proved more durable than sports and entertainment: broadband, the piping that carries all streaming platforms. In the first quarter, sales increased 12 percent, to $5.6 billion.

Ten years ago, Comcast created Internet Essentials to help address the digital divide and the homework gap and give low-income families the opportunity to experience the transformative power of the Internet in their own homes. Over the last decade, we’ve worked with thousands of partners across the country and have collectively made tremendous progress. In our service area, 40% of the growth in broadband adoption among low-income households with school-age children can be attributed to the Internet Essentials program.

As the world approaches the one-year anniversary of the widespread pandemic stay-at-home shift, 2020 traffic patterns reveal a sharp traffic surge in March and April, followed by a transition into a more typical – although still elevated – growth trend throughout the balance of the year. Traffic patterns remained highly asymmetrical, as downstream traffic volumes were 14x higher than upstream traffic volumes throughout 2020. Peak Internet traffic rose 32 percent over pre-pandemic levels, and over 50 percent in some markets in March. Peak downstream traffic in 2020 increased approximately 38

Comcast made several announcements that build on its longstanding commitment to advancing digital equity, closing the digital divide, and addressing both digital literacy and the homework gap.

Comcast will extend its commitments to help people connect to the Internet during the COVID-19 pandemic as millions continue to stay home while many workplaces and schools operate virtually. Comcast will continue to provide free Internet service for the first 60 days for new Internet Essentials customers, and free access to more than 1.5 million public Xfinity WiFi hotspots, the largest network of its kind in the country, through June 30, 2021. The announcement marks the third time Comcast has extended these commitments.

Comcast reported results for the quarter ended September 30, 2020. The company added a record 633,000 high-speed internet customers. Highspeed internet revenue increased 10.1%, due to an increase in the number of residential high-speed internet customers and an increase in average rates. Wireless revenue increased 22.8%, due to an increase in the number of customer lines.