Comcast Down 181,000 Broadband Subs, in Line with Expectations
The cable operator updated its mobile contract with Verizon.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 29, 2026 – Comcast lost 181,000 broadband subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2025, directly in line with Wall Street expectations.
“In the fourth quarter we did see a more competitive environment from fiber, and that remains” into January, Comcast Chief Financial Officer Jason Armstrong said on the company’s earnings call. “I think we assume that’s going to happen continually as we go forward.”
He added fixed wireless competition was “pretty consistent. We’re seeing stability there.”
The cable industry has been losing broadband subscribers steadily in recent years amid the end of the Affordable Connectivity Program, consumer frustration over pricing, and competition from fixed wireless and fiber. But Comcast has been making an effort to stave off those losses with price locks and offering bundled plans with one-year free wireless lines.
“While it’s still early, we remain encouraged by what we’re seeing, including lower voluntary churn,” Armstrong said. He said the company was looking to get the majority of its 31.3 million broadband subscribers onto one of its new pricing plans as quickly as possible.
Some of those new plans have five-year price locks, and Comcast has said it won’t be raising rates on other subscribers in the first half of 2026. That coupled with an offer of free wireless lines for one year put pressure on the company’s average revenue per user (ARPU).
Comcast’s ARPU was $73.08 in the fourth quarter, again in line with analyst expectations but down from the previous quarter. Armstrong said the company expected to be faring better in the second half of the year as more free wireless lines converted to paying customers.
About 60 percent of the company's network had been upgraded to mid-split technology, Comcast Co-CEO Mike Cavanagh said.
Mobile
Comcast added 364,000 mobile lines, fewer than Wall Street had predicted but up from 307,000 one year ago, for a total of 9.3 million.
About half of those additions were customers taking the company up on its offer of a free line for one year. Cavanagh said about 15 percent of its residential broadband customers were also mobile customers.
The carriers and cable companies have been working to sell bundled fixed and mobile broadband, an effort to make customers less likely to leave.
“We have a long runway ahead of us,” Cavanagh said.
Like fellow cable giant Charter, which has been using a similar playbook to stem broadband losses, Comcast offers its mobile product through a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) deal with Verizon.
Cavanagh said the company had updated that deal, but didn’t offer many specifics.
“We amended the longstanding agreement,” he said. “It’s a good arrangement for all parties involved. It’s modernized, and it’s a foundation for mutual profitable growth as we continue to build the business together.”
He said the modernization would be “supporting continued profitable growth for Comcast, Charter, and Verizon.”
“We’ve long known that the MVNO agreement is ‘perpetual and irrevocable,’ but the market has never quite gotten past the fear that the MVNO agreement might somehow have been in jeopardy,” MoffettNathanson founder Craig Moffett said in an investor note.
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