Comcast Execs: Our Pricing Is Opaque and We Can Be Hard to Do Business With

The talking points in Comcast’s Q1 earnings call included an unusual item: the “pain points” the company admitted to inflicting on its Xfinity broadband customers, which it further admitted were costing it business.

“We are not winning in the marketplace in a way that is commensurate with the strength of [our] network and connectivity products,” said Comcast President Mike Cavanagh. “One [reason] is price transparency and predictability, and the other is the level of ease of doing business with us.”

Both problems are “fixable,” Cavanagh said, “with execution plans…already underway.”

He pointed to the five-year rate guarantee Comcast introduced last week, which advertises a lock on base rates (but not taxes and fees) that start at $55 a month for 400Mbps downloads and include free rental of a Wi-Fi gateway plus unlimited data, with no contract required. These plans also throw in one year of free wireless service at Comcast’s Xfinity Mobile, which combines resold Verizon Wireless capacity with the company’s own Wi-Fi network.

Cavanaugh and other executives hinted at more along those lines. “Providing more value to our customers with less complexity and friction is a top priority, and you will see our go-to-market approach continue to evolve over the coming months,” he said. 

Jason Armstrong, Comcast’s chief financial officer, said the company would “focus on pricing transparency and simplicity, a unified national approach and more products translating into more value for our customers,” to be continued with “other actions we will take in the coming months.”

Comcast reported $3.38 billion in net income for the quarter, down from $3.86 billion in the year-ago quarter. It counted 29.2 million residential broadband subscribers, versus 29.69 million in Q1 2024–including a loss of 183,000 in just the latest quarter. The company cited competition from both fiber-optic and fixed wireless providers.

(Research firm MoffettNathanson disagreed in a note analyzing Comcast’s earnings, suggesting that the company is the victim of “a sharp slowdown in overall industry growth rather than a shift in competitive intensity” that it chalked up to the expiration of the federal government’s Affordable Connectivity Program subsidies for lower-income households.)

Comcast’s rate plans have historically required intense inspection to identify gotchas like fine-print fees to rent a modem (which you don’t have to do), the poorly disclosed 1.2TB data cap in markets outside the Northeast, steep out-year increases in base rates after promotional periods, and regular increases to the above costs.

The price-locked plans that Comcast just rolled out, however, show that some of that opacity remains. In addition to the five-year guarantees, the company offers plans with only a one-year guarantee that cost $15 less, and all of them list much higher rates after those terms expire.

For example, Comcast’s entry-level 400Mbps tier (with 41Mbps upload speeds listed at San Francisco and Washington addresses) would jump from $55 a month after the five-year rate lock or $40 a month after a one-year rate lock to $74 in the Bay Area and $83 a month in DC. 

The cost to rent one of Comcast’s xFi gateways would also increase from free to varying totals: $25 a month in San Francisco for a bundle of the modem/router and its xFi Complete service bundle, or $15 a month in the District for just the hardware. All of these prices reflect a $10 discount for paperless billing and automatic payments from a bank account.

We surfaced those details by consulting the broadband labels Comcast posts for these plans, as required by a Federal Communications Commission rule that went into effect last spring.

Pricing games and past episodes of customer-hostile behavior at Comcast support have left PCMag readers unimpressed. While Xfinity ranked third overall on our Best Internet Providers list, its below-par score of 7.1 out of 10 for customer satisfaction pushed it down to 11th place on our 2024 Readers’ Choice list. 

Between the unlimited data on the new rate-locked offerings, Comcast introducing prepaid broadband plans last May without data caps, and the “X-Class” unlimited-data service it sells in areas with upgraded cable facilities, ditching the data cap for existing subscribers would seem an obvious next move. 

But while Comcast might seem so close to getting it, the call also featured David Watson, CEO for connectivity and platforms, reassuring an analyst that the new rate-locked plans did not represent “a broad repricing of our base.” So we’re not there yet.

About Rob Pegoraro

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Rob Pegoraro writes about interesting problems and possibilities in computers, gadgets, apps, services, telecom, and other things that beep or blink. He’s covered such developments as the evolution of the cell phone from 1G to 5G, the fall and rise of Apple, Google’s growth from obscure Yahoo rival to verb status, and the transformation of social media from CompuServe forums to Facebook’s billions of users. Pegoraro has met most of the founders of the internet and once received a single-word email reply from Steve Jobs.

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