Comcast Calls Rivals' $30 Broadband 'Irrational' While Haemorrhaging Customers and Planning Mass Layoffs
Comcast is having a rough time, and its response appears to be blaming competitors for offering prices people can actually afford.
The US cable giant shed 144,000 residential broadband subscribers in Q3 2026, a notably worse result than the 91,000 it lost in the same quarter last year. That brings its total US residential broadband base to 28.3 million, a number that has been pointing in one direction for the better part of three years. Video continues its predictable freefall too, down another 274,000 customers to 10.4 million total.
On an earnings call, co-CEO Mike Cavanagh blamed the losses on aggressive fixed wireless operators and fiber providers engaging in what Comcast CFO Jason Armstrong called 'irrational pricing.' The specific offence? Rivals offering broadband for $30 to $40 a month. Armstrong argued this makes no financial sense given that fiber deployment costs upwards of $1,500 per home passed. While he declined to name names, Verizon's FiOS plans start at exactly $30 a month. Funny that.
The word 'irrational' is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. What Comcast appears to mean is that its competitors are pricing in ways that hurt Comcast. Customers calling it 'affordable' probably have a different take.
Armstrong also acknowledged that Comcast is losing subscribers when promotional pricing expires and bills jump. He described these as 'pricing transitions,' which is a remarkably gentle way of saying customers are leaving when they realize what they're actually going to be charged.
Restructuring, Redundancies, and Robots
Comcast says it's embarking on the biggest operational overhaul in its history. Cavanagh called it a transformation that could unlock 'billions of dollars over time.' A one-off charge of over $1 billion will hit Q4 earnings to cover the cost of getting there.
Bloomberg and Variety have both reported that significant job cuts are coming, focused on the cable division rather than the NBCUniversal side of the business. Comcast didn't offer specifics when pressed, which is standard practice when a company hasn't yet decided how many people it wants to let go.
A good chunk of those cuts are expected to fall on customer service, where Comcast is replacing humans with AI agents. The company has partnered with Sierra and Cresta to expand AI across customer interactions, claiming it has already cut customer service contact rates by around 20 percent and eliminated over 30 million service interactions so far this year compared to the same period last time around. Whether customers experience this as 'better service' or just more frustrating conversations with a chatbot remains an open question. Comcast's customer service reputation was not exactly sterling to begin with.
Armstrong framed Comcast's own free wireless line offer as entirely rational, pointing out that unlike fiber construction, it requires no capital deployment since the company operates as an MVNO reselling Verizon's network. The free line converts to $30 a month after a year, bundled with a home broadband subscription. He said around 70 percent of those free lines convert into paying subscribers, which is the number that actually matters.
The Bigger Picture
Comcast's total company revenue came in at $29.3 billion for the quarter, down from $31.2 billion a year ago. Net income actually ticked up slightly, from $3.33 billion to $3.45 billion, and the stock rose after results beat analyst expectations overall. Peacock turning a profit helped. But broadband losses came in worse than forecast and wireless line additions disappointed.
Separately, Comcast is still on track to spin off NBCUniversal and Sky into a separate publicly traded company by mid-2027, a move announced back in June.
For context, Comcast grew its broadband subscriber base every single quarter for two decades before reporting its first net loss in Q2 2022. Things have not meaningfully stabilized since. A five-year price lock and unlimited data offers haven't reversed the trend. Now the plan involves AI agents, job cuts, and calling the competition irrational. We'll see how that goes.