NBCU To Take Part in Incentive Auction, Activate Verizon MVNO, Roberts Says

Comcast plans to take part in the broadcast TV incentive auction through NBCUniversal and plans to activate the Verizon mobile virtual network operator "to trial some things and test some things," Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said Tuesday during the company's Q3 earnings call. "We're in a [wireless] test-and-learn mode and I think it's a natural part of the evolution of our company and participation in the mobile space beyond Wi-Fi," Comcast Cable CEO Neil Smit said in response to a question about the company's wireless strategy. Q3 revenue was up 11.2 percent year over year to $18.7 billion, due to factors including a growing high-speed Internet subscriber base and the performance of Hollywood blockbusters like Jurassic World. Roberts said deployment of X1 set-top boxes is at 40,000 per day, with 25 percent of its video subscribers now X1 customers, which is lowering churn and leading to higher revenue per subscriber. While multichannel video programming distributors saw their biggest customer losses ever in Q2, Comcast said it hasn't been a major contributor to that. It reported 69,000 video customers lost in Q2, and 48,000 for Q3. Those 48,000 make for Comcast's best third quarter in nine years, and cable "is now unmistakably taking shares from satellite and TelCo TV is fading fast," Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson Research emailed investors Tuesday. While broadband has driven some of that, Moffett said, so too has "cable's two-way architecture and Comcast's ... user interface and VOD libraries. Cable's improvement in basic video looks sustainable." Though Comcast is buying a majority of Universal Studios Japan, large acquisitions in the U.S. are "unlikely ... under the current administration," wrote analyst Jeffrey Wlodarczak of Pivotal Research Group.