Updated on December 10, 2021
A tipping point’s been reached for the nation’s biggest cable TV and Internet service provider. In an earnings announcement on Monday, Comcast has announced that for the first time, it has more broadband Internet subscribers than cable television subscribers.
It’s pretty reflective of several trends, particularly the prominence of cord cutting. Cord cutting’s increasing popularity likely stems from how awful, expensive and increasingly less necessary (for non-sports fans) a cable TV subscription’s becoming. There’s also that Internet access has become a necessary utility on par with phone service. Finally, broadband of reasonable speed is usually only available through a cable TV/Internet service provider like Comcast, versus slower DSL from phone companies.
All this comes on the heels of Comcast’s recent abandoning of its merger with Time Warner Cable. Of course, since Comcast is now primarily a broadband provider, it’s got even more incentive to fight off Internet service regulation by the FCC. Can’t have pesky things like fair pricing, actual competition (including from municipal ISPs), and so forth infringing upon its cash-cow monopoly, after all.
Flickr Creative Commons photo by Mike Mozart (CC BY)
