Cable Broadband Growth Re-accelerating, Comcast Says

Cable operators are again seeing broadband businesses grow at faster rates, after a few quarters of slowing growth, Comcast executives told investors Wednesday. The renewed growth, which they said was rare for a business line that’s been active for a decade, had to do with its DOCSIS 3.0 deployments and the growing popularity of online video and gaming. “We and other cable companies have started to re-accelerate our net adds,” said Chief Operating Officer Stephen Burke. “In each of the last two quarters our net adds alone were as much as the entire big RBOC footprint combined."

Plus, new devices such as the iPad are lifting demand for cable broadband connections, CEO Brian Roberts said. “It all starts with who’s got the best broadband,” he said. “The investment strategy has been and continues to be, at both the technical level and the consumer branding level, that we have the superior broadband, and that’s the strategy we've laid out for several years."

Comcast has deployed DOCSIS 3.0 technology to about 80 percent of its footprint, and has converted more than 40 percent of systems to all-digital, which could allow for even higher broadband speed gains, executives said. “Once you go all-digital you free up a lot of capacity,” Burke said. “There is no question in our minds that we have plenty of capacity to continue to increase broadband speeds, in advance of the applications that will be there for them."

Meanwhile, Comcast’s successful appeal of the FCC’s network management order against the company won’t affect the way Comcast operates, Roberts said. “We changed that practice long before there were any FCC rulings whatsoever.” Comcast is open to working with regulators as the prospect of Title II reclassification looms. “We continue to want to have a constructive dialogue with all of our regulators, and the FCC in particular, to try to find ways to have customers comfortable and knowing that investment is going to continue to flow,” Roberts said.

Comcast lost 82,000 basic video subscribers during the first quarter, but added 399,000 broadband subscribers and 273,000 VoIP customers, it said. Q1 sales gained 3.8 percent from a year earlier to $9.2 billion. Profit rose 12 percent to $866 million.