Comcast’s attempt to slow broadband customer losses still isn’t stopping the bleeding as fiber and fixed wireless competition intensifies. In Q4 2025 alone, Comcast lost 181,000 broadband subscribers, even as it leans harder into wireless bundling and other business lines like Peacock and theme parks. Ars Technica reports:
The Q4 net loss is more than the 176,000 loss predicted by analysts, although not as bad as the 199,000-customer loss that spurred [Comcast President Mike Cavanagh’s] comment about Comcast “not winning in the marketplace” nine months ago. The Q4 2025 loss reported today is also worse than the 139,000-customer loss in Q4 2024 and the 34,000-customer loss in Q4 2023.
“Subscriber losses were 181,000, as the early traction we are seeing from our new initiatives was more than offset by continued competitive intensity,” Comcast CFO Jason Armstrong said during an earnings call today, according to a Motley Fool transcript. Comcast’s residential broadband customers dropped to 28.72 million, while business broadband customers dropped to 2.54 million, for a total of 31.26 million.
Armstrong said that average revenue per user grew 1.1 percent, “consistent with the deceleration that we had previewed reflecting our new go-to-market pricing, including lower everyday pricing and strong adoption of free wireless lines.” Armstrong expects average revenue per user to continue growing slowly “for the next couple of quarters, driven by the absence of a rate increase, the impact from free wireless lines, and the ongoing migration of our base to simplified pricing.” Comcast Connectivity & Platforms chief Steve Croney said the firm is facing “a more competitive environment from fiber” and continued competition from fixed wireless. “The market is going to remain intensely competitive,” he said.
Maybe, just maybe, Comcast should have spent all those government subsidies to update its infrastructure to full fiber and not bullshit like packet shaping, inspection and throttling to improve its bottom line and stop customers from using to the fullest extent the very thing we were paying for.
Before I moved, the local government subsidized fiber came into my neighborhood in 6 months (I was pretty far out there in the burbs) and I had 4gbit fiber for $80 a month compared to the forced triple play package I was locked into so I could have the fastest speed from Comcast (800mbit/30mbit) for astounding $350 a month. Top that off, I had a data cap I nearly exceeded monthly of 1tb and that cost and additional $50 for “unlimited“.
So good riddance Comcast/xfinity.
Fucking hate all the coax providers. Absolute monopoly granted to them in insane. I’m stuck with an even worse one - Spectrum. No other options where I live. Tmo home internet is cheaper but it’s not reliable enough despite a $400 antenna pointed directly at their tower. And CGNAT breaks a ton of shit.
My experience with T-Mobile home Internet was awful but I swapped to a T-Mobile business Internet plan. For the same cost I was now able to use my own hardware. All I had was a SIM from them. At best I have gotten 750ish MB down and 200ish MB up. For $50, not bad if you other option is coax.
$70, not $50. And this breaks the deal: https://www.t-mobile.com/business/filtering
Not really usable at home.
Imagine how fast this decline would have been if not for all the collusion between providers. I was always surrounded by better options that just didn’t quite serve my area any time I was forced to use these twats.
Good. Fuck them. They fucked everyone else long enough.
At one point in 2017 I was paying $60/month for 30 Mbps/5Mbps.
Five. Fucking. Megabits. Up.
1994, cable lines installed by Adelphia in my area. Soon after, bought by Comcast, top speed - 280mbps for $60 in 2017, then $70 2 years later. NO new lines installed since 1994. 2020 ice storm downs miles and miles of cable and electric, they report “upgraded lines”, my limit is increased to 400mbps, still get 280. 3 mo later, price goes to $80. Frontier installed fiber last year, I told them I’m cancelling. Their save offer? 300mbps for $85. My jaw dropped. I wasn’t going to stay no matter what, but I felt gaslighted.
I think Crapcast offered me a year of free internet.
I told them to go pound sand. I was lucky enough to get (almost) gigabit fiber for ~$80/month.
They would lose me, if I had an alternative. In my neighborhood it’s cable or 1mbps DSL. Neighborhoods across the street to the east and west both have nice and cheap fiber but my neighborhood is older than one and less affluent than the other.
seems like the perfect opportunity to resell their fiber as your own ISP. then in 6-8 months sell your company to them and make a profit large enough to move because your neighbors are gonna be pissed.
I’d go with the DSL option before paying Comcast anything. I swore I’d never use them again in 2004 and every place I’ve moved since one of my requirements is an ISP that isn’t Comcast. When I moved into my house I found the Comcast cable buried in my back yard and chopped it. Fuck em!
as it leans harder into wireless bundling and other business lines like Peacock and theme parks
Theme parks.
“Kids, pile into the van, we’re going to Comcast World!”
I’m sure they own lots of IP from their various acquisitions. But, fundamentally they’re a cable company.
Universal Studios
Sure, like I said, they own lots of IP from their various acquisitions. But, they’re still fundamentally a cable company.
Tipping point. Their reputation is complete trash. People only subscribe to Comcast as a last resort.
Within the past year I shopped around for a new home internet provider. The legacy companies encouraged if not required talking to a human being to find out anything about service availability and rates and then be subject to a hard sales pitch. Appointment availability for the install was 2+ weeks out. The new fiber companies had all the info I could want clearly online, appointments available within 2 days, with minimal fuss. The legacy company humans were also often incorrect about their own product, potentially lying to make a sale.
If they act like a company from the 90s, they aren’t going to capture customers who came into adulthood after that.
That’s not even touching on the speeds they offer are slower than their competitors for a steeper price.
Or the poor reputations they have of never doing anything because they owned the market. We remember “Time Warner Cable”.
I can understand that speeds vary by area, but it’s not like it’s difficult at all to have those in a database where a web tool can return them based on your zip code. But yeah, it was like that when I signed up with Optimum (nee Suddenlink) years ago.
The other thing they do is require a truck roll for any kind of hookup. They almost got some of my business back but were so rigid that I said “the hell with it”. My fiber provider was having some growing pains and I called Optimum to reactivate my service on a lower plan to use as a backup connection (I work from home). All they needed to do was setup the account and re-authorize my modem (my hookup was still live and I had my own modem). They flat out refused to do any of that and required a tech to come “within 3-5 business days” and read the modem serial number to them to activate it. So I said hell with it, called T-Mobile, and activated my old 5G hotspot.
I’m currently moving from a place where my only options are AT&T or the cable company to a place where my only options are AT&T or the cable company.
My condolences. Where is this “competition breeds excellence” outcome that capitalism promised me?
Maybe take some of that broadband expansion money you took over the last 20 years and upgrade your network.
As a NYer: Is that what’s supposed to happen?
Haha. Yeah Charter is good at moving that goalpost aren’t they?
despite … unlimited data
Unlimited data isn’t a selling point. That is shit you always had that Comcast took away, only to realize customers really fucking hate that. Returning to a basic level of service isn’t a boon; there is a looming Comcast threat they will fuck you again.
despite price guarantee
It’s a 1-year-promo price. Comcast just delays raping your wallet for a year in hopes you will lie back and think of England when the time comes.
I paid $180 a month for unlimited data on cox, but they threatened to terminate my account after I passed 1tb of upload in a month, they were calling and telling me it’s a violation of their terms of service. I said I pay for fucking unlimited data, “that doesn’t include upload” you scummy little fucks, false fucking marketing in that case because you advertised UNLIMITED DATA.
I lucked out when I bought a house that has quantum fiber, I pay $50 a month for 500/500 and real unlimited. I push 4 - 8 tb of usage per month with about half being upload.
Reminder that Comcast is funding Trump’s ballroom and also has a contract with ICE.
Comcast—in the top ten of the shittiest companies of all time that no one wants to have to deal with—is surprised that their “new” deal of, “be slightly less villainous, and expect all our problems to go away” isn’t working.
Who knew that spending thirty years treating your customers like garbage would have them bail the moment they have a choice?
Yeah, literally everybody.
The fact that they think that “bundling” products people don’t want with products that they do want is a strategy to get MORE customers give you an idea if how disconnected these idiots are.
When you spend this much time fucking your customers the last thing they want is more shit from you. I’ll be dead in the ground before I let the people who fuck up my simple Internet billing every month handle my wireless plan and I’ll be damned if I pay fucking RENT on a shitty modem and router.
Fuck Comcast, it’s not even real Unlimited. You have to use their device, which is the most unsecure device in the world AND they still impose bandwidth caps and throttling if you exceed a certain amount in a day or week calling it “Excessive Use”.
You can use their modem with your own router. Just switch the modem to bridge mode and then you don’t have to deal with it or any of its security issues.
Ditching Comcast is one of the best decisions I think I’ve ever made.
I went with the T-Mobile home internet for a while, and then we got fiber in the area, so I went and changed to them, but if I can avoid it, I’ll never give Comcast another dollar of my money.
My first apartment had Comcast or DSL. I signed up, a month later I was part of their “experimental” data caps program. During the course of this I had a sales rep call and fell for the pitch. Turns out, he downright committed fraud and made promises that were patently untrue. It took 48 hours of back and forth in various mediums over the course of a month to get the situation resolved.
The solution was to complain on reddit and have an employee give me a one time use code to use Comcast’s VIP support center… Which is ridiculous that it exists in the first place.
I predicated all my subsequent (about 4) moves with “Comcast is not in the area” as a filtering criteria. Fuck Comcast.
An apartment I used to have had cable as the only option, and it was incredibly expensive, and they thought, since it was the only option available, that they could charge whatever they wanted and get away with it. And when I was using T-Mobile Home Internet in that apartment, I was getting a cheaper price and higher speeds than everybody else in the building.
Fixed wireless really does have a way of humbling these stupid legacy providers.
Weird. I don’t remember having an alt, or making this comment. :) Did the exact same progression, Xfinity to tmobile to fiber gig. Never going back to Xfinity.
I desperately need a competitor to come in. They’re trying to raise my bill 50% right now and there’s not a single other broadband service at my address.
