Comcast Says There's 6 Million Unhappy DSL Users Left To Target (dslreports.com)

Karl Bode, writing for DSLReports: As we noted last week, cable is effectively demolishing phone companies when it comes to new broadband subscriber additions, and Comcast still says the company has plenty of room to grow. Comcast and Charter alone added 500,000 net broadband subscribers last quarter, while the nation's biggest telcos collectively lost 360,783 broadband users during the same period. With AT&T and Verizon backing away from unwanted DSL users, and Windstream Frontier and CenturyLink only eyeing piecemeal upgrades, the bloodshed is far from over. Speaking this week at the Nomura 2016 Media, Telecom & Internet Conference, Comcast VP Marcien Jenckes stated that the company has plenty of unhappy DSL customers left to nab. In fact, Comcast says the company still has around 6 million DSL subscribers in its territory, many of which are likely frustrated by outdated speeds.

Comments

Ignoring the point

[ausekilis]

What about the 20+ million unhappy Comcast subscribers? Shouldn't they target some of them for better service?

Wait, this is Comcast. Those people are already in the gallows.

Re:Ignoring the point

[NormalVisual]

Likewise. I have a 12 Mbit business Uverse connection through AT&T. It has plenty of drawbacks - in particular the modem takes about 10 minutes to reboot/resync if the power blips, which happens several times a week where I live, and they can't decide whether or not I have problems with the physical line. One time they'll say, "oh yeah, we need to get that line replaced", and then the next it's "the line test looks fine to me". However, it's $65/month, I have 5 static IPs, IPv6 (finally) works well, and I can run whatever the hell I want on my connection. Every year or so, I get a quote from Comcast to compare. This year, it was $75/month for comparable service, plus another $30/month for 5 statics, plus $7.50/month for the modem rental (they won't allow customers to use their own gear with static IPs), and a $300 installation charge plus a 1 year commitment. I specifically told Comcast to contact me via email as I wouldn't be available on the phone during the day. Over a period of two weeks, three different sales reps called a total of 5 times while I was at work, and each time I responded via email and reminded them that they should contact me via that means. I never got a response, and eventually they just stopped calling. If that's how conscientious they are when trying to get my business, I shudder to think what the customer service would be like once they have my money.

AT&T sucks in a lot of ways, but they're cheaper, they're responsive, and if I have issues I can usually get in touch with someone that actually knows something instead of having to walk through a useless 45-minute script with some phone jockey. I'd like to avail myself of better/faster service, but Comcast seems to do everything they can to keep me from switching.

Delusional

[StormReaver]

Comcast is delusional if it thinks speed is the major bottleneck between subscribers and happiness. It is but one of many issues, though it is somewhat significant. By far, the bigger issues are:

1) Price. High speed Internet access in America is way over priced, and way under-delivered.

2) Lack of choices. We need the municipalities to own the infrastructure, and multiple, competing private companies to administer it. It's the only model that works.

3) Availability. High speed Internet is available in probably 10% (or less) of America, despite decades of massive tax cuts to Internet providers for the sole purpose of connecting America. The corruptions needs to stop, and we need to get our money back.

Re:DSL is my only option

[aardvarkjoe]

Maybe Comcast isn't interested in building the infrastructure to offer service solely for internet-only customers.

We will convert them ...

[PPH]

... to 6 million very unhappy cable customers.

Comcast must be better than Time Warner

[wjcofkc]

My girlfriend and I finally reached the breaking point with Time Warner and cancelled our "working when it wants to be" 100 megabit service for a perfectly stable 7 megabit DSL connection. It was a matter of maintaining sanity and we are much happier with it. Also, no more burning up mobile hotspot bandwidth every time it flaked out.