Comcast’s Xfinity Mobile shines in Q2 as wireless, broadband becomes the new cable bundle | ZDNet

Comcast’s Xfinity Mobile wireless business is now profitable, and the company added 280,000 new subscribers in the second quarter as the company’s broadband-wireless bundles are resonating.

On a conference call with analysts following Comcast’s second quarter earnings report, CEO Brian Roberts said the company is seeing a payoff from reprioritizing wireless across its sales channel.

Roberts said the 280,000 wireless subscriber lines are the highest of any quarter since Xfinity Mobile launched. Roberts added Xfinity Mobile was seeing the “fastest sales momentum we ever had” with gains to come due to unlimited plans for families and small businesses.

Indeed, Comcast’s wireless business had second quarter revenue of $556 million, up 70.4% from a year ago. 

Comcast’s wireless unit runs on Verizon’s network and appears to be working out for both parties. Comcast is using wireless to create new bundles for the 60 million homes and businesses in its footprint. Verizon on its earnings call didn’t mention Comcast by name, but CEO Hans Vestberg noted he was happy with his MVNO customers.

For Comcast, the general idea to focus on customer connectivity and using its virtualized network to add services as well as automate.

Roberts added:

Currently, there are typically 25 connected devices in the home, with 8 active at any one time, and this increases every year. That drives in-home Wi-Fi usage to 15x that of wireless, delivering huge amount of data at consistent speeds and reducing latency is what’s powering our growth. And we’re doing this in a cost-efficient way. Virtualizing our network, combined with our suite of digital tools, also allows us to continue to improve the customer experience while identifying additional cost savings. And the progress we’ve made is evident in our results. During the second quarter, total agent calls decreased by 10% and total interactions were down by 7%. We also saw a 22% reduction in truck rolls, despite an over 5% increase in our customer base.

Add it up and Comcast is faring well with broadband revenue up 14.3% and business services sales up 10%. Even video was up 2.6%. Comcast reported second quarter earnings per share of 80 cents a share on revenue of $28.55 billion, up 20.4% from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings were 84 cents a share compared to Wall Street estimates of 67 cents a share.