In April 2025, Comcast President Mike Cavanagh bemoaned that the company’s cable broadband division was “not winning in the marketplace” amid increased competition from fiber and fixed wireless Internet service providers.
Cavanagh identified some problems that had been obvious to Comcast customers for many years: Its prices aren’t transparent enough and rise too frequently, and dealing with the company is too difficult. Comcast sought to fix the problems with a five-year price guarantee, one year of free Xfinity Mobile service for home Internet customers, and plans with unlimited data instead of punitive data caps. But the company is still losing broadband customers at a higher-than-expected rate.
In Q4 2025 earnings announced today, Comcast reported a net loss of 181,000 residential and business broadband customers in the US. The loss consists of 178,000 residential Internet customers and 3,000 business customers.
The Q4 net loss is more than the 176,000 loss predicted by analysts, although not as bad as the 199,000-customer loss that spurred Cavanagh’s comment about Comcast “not winning in the marketplace” nine months ago. The Q4 2025 loss reported today is also worse than the 139,000-customer loss in Q4 2024 and the 34,000-customer loss in Q4 2023.
“Subscriber losses were 181,000, as the early traction we are seeing from our new initiatives was more than offset by continued competitive intensity,” Comcast CFO Jason Armstrong said during an earnings call today, according to a Motley Fool transcript.
Comcast’s residential broadband customers dropped to 28.72 million, while business broadband customers dropped to 2.54 million, for a total of 31.26 million.
Average revenue per user grows slowly
Armstrong said that average revenue per user grew 1.1 percent, “consistent with the deceleration that we had previewed reflecting our new go-to-market pricing, including lower everyday pricing and strong adoption of free wireless lines.” Armstrong expects average revenue per user to continue growing slowly “for the next couple of quarters, driven by the absence of a rate increase, the impact from free wireless lines, and the ongoing migration of our base to simplified pricing.”
Comcast Connectivity & Platforms chief Steve Croney said the firm is facing “a more competitive environment from fiber” and continued competition from fixed wireless. “The market is going to remain intensely competitive,” he said.
Cavanagh said that over the past year, Comcast “made the most significant go-to-market shift in our company’s history. We have simplified our broadband offering by moving away from short-term promotions toward a clear, transparent value proposition.” But more changes are needed, he said.
“Looking ahead, 2026 is about building on the changes we made in 2025… This will be the largest broadband investment year in our history, focused squarely on customer experience and simplification, with the goal of migrating the majority of residential broadband customers to our new simplified pricing and packaging by year-end,” Cavanagh said.
Comcast’s domestic broadband revenue was $6.32 billion, down from $6.38 billion a year ago. Cable TV revenue was $6.36 billion, down from $6.74 billion year over year. Mobile revenue rose from $1.19 billion to $1.40 billion year over year, buoyed by 1.5 million new mobile lines added during the full year of 2025.
Comcast said it now has over 9 million total mobile lines and aims to get more of its broadband customers into bundles of Internet and wireless service. Comcast offers consumer mobile service through an agreement with Verizon and struck a deal with T-Mobile to deliver mobile services to business customers this year.
Peacock boosts revenue
As the owner of NBCUniversal, Comcast has a lot more going on than cable and mobile. Strong results in the Peacock streaming service and Universal Studios theme parks helped Comcast meet analysts’ revenue projections and exceed profit estimates. Peacock paid subscribers increased 22 percent year over year to 44 million, and revenue grew 23 percent to 1.6 billion in the quarter, Comcast said.
Total Q4 2025 revenue was $32.31 billion, up 1.2 percent year over year. Net income was $2.17 billion, a 54.6 percent drop compared to a profit of $4.78 billion in Q4 2024. Comcast indicated the drop isn’t as bad as it sounds because it reflects “an unfavorable comparison to the prior year period, which included a $1.9 billion income tax benefit due to an internal corporate reorganization.” Comcast’s stock price was up about 3 percent today but has fallen about 16 percent in the past 12 months.
Comcast is one of the two biggest cable companies in the US alongside Charter, which is scheduled to announce Q4 2025 earnings tomorrow. In Q3 2025, Charter reported a loss of 109,000 Internet customers, a bit more than Comcast’s 104,000-customer loss in the same quarter. Charter, which is seeking regulatory approval to buy cable company Cox, had 27.76 million residential Internet customers and 2.03 million small business Internet customers.
Disclosure: The Advance/Newhouse Partnership, which owns 12 percent of Charter, is part of Advance Publications, which owns Ars Technica parent Condé Nast.
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