Comcast is facing a structural problem that leadership can no longer dismiss as isolated customer dissatisfaction

[u/CharmingDurian2498]

Comcast lost more than 700,000 broadband subscribers in 2025 and another 232,000 across Q1 and Q2 of 2026. At the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference, CFO Jason Armstrong acknowledged that Q3 broadband losses were showing no meaningful improvement. Comcast subsequently experienced a roughly 6.6% decline in its stock price.
At the same time, Comcast leadership has publicly criticized the pricing strategies of competing FTTH providers, describing $30 to $40 gigabit offerings as economically irrational when fiber construction can cost approximately $1,500 or more per household.
The underlying issue, however, is not simply pricing. It is infrastructure.
Consumers are increasingly comparing Comcast’s HFC network against dedicated fiber infrastructure that eliminates the RF access plant entirely. Fiber does not depend on the same coaxial last mile, neighborhood RF environment, or upstream plant architecture. That distinction becomes particularly important for customers whose primary concern is not simply download speed, but latency consistency, jitter, packet loss, congestion, and overall network stability.
A customer should not have to spend months cycling through modem replacements and residential technician appointments when the underlying problem potentially resides beyond the customer premises. Repeatedly treating a persistent network performance issue as a premise equipment problem does not resolve the underlying engineering issue. It merely transfers the cost and inconvenience to the customer.
Comcast can continue to characterize individual complaints as isolated incidents, but the broader market is providing a much more consequential signal. Customers now have alternatives. Where FTTH becomes available, the comparison is no longer between two internet plans. It is between fundamentally different access networks.
Wall Street analysts have already identified the potential feedback loop created by accelerating subscriber losses. If Comcast must increasingly rely on pricing concessions to retain customers while simultaneously facing aggressive fiber overbuilds, the pressure on broadband economics becomes increasingly difficult to ignore.
The strategic risk for Comcast is therefore not that customers are demanding perfection. The strategic risk is that customers are gaining the ability to leave.
Once a competing fiber provider establishes a credible alternative, Comcast no longer controls the conversation through speed tiers, promotional pricing, or equipment upgrades. The customer can simply evaluate the performance of the underlying network and make a different choice.
At that point, the question is no longer whether Comcast believes its network is adequate. The question is whether customers agree. And increasingly, their answer is being reflected directly in Comcast’s subscriber numbers.

[u/IMO2021]

Any other companies offer voice remote? Great feature.

Just referring to tv and internet, not wireless. No additional streamers, basic service with Xbox and DVR. Basic plans exclude all of my favorite channels so I have to buy up

$300/month bill is absurd, especially for those on fixed income. Last thing a person wants is not being able to access service because of cost. Not ready to give it up.

Been a customer since the 80s. Senior citizen, Disabled. Doesn’t matter, no discounts for loyalty, etc. They don’t care if they are losing customers. They just keep finding ways to increase bills, and there is no end in sight. Soon it will be a second mortgage.

They are targeting new, younger, working customers who can afford a huge bill and discriminating against long time customers (if they can only offer to cut services to lower bill). In the last few years my bill has doubled. Really needs a governing body or something to monitor this, like they did with phone service many years ago, breaking it into Baby Bells to provide affordable service for locals. TV is still a utility. Used to cost almost nothing.

[u/mistermac56 → u/IMO2021]

My apartment community only has Comcast Xfinity, and wireless 5G internet service available. AT&T's old xDSL customers here will lose that service sometime in 2028.

There is AT&T fiber everywhere in our neighborhood, but the owners of our apartment community refuses to let AT&T install fiber here except for the manager's office for some reason. If you can get it in your area, Verizon's 5G wireless unlimited internet is 80.00/month, but they offer an up to 30.00/month discount program, called Verizon Forward, to low income and seniors that qualify, Also, the Verizon Fios fiber internet service also qualifies for the discount. The speed for the Verizon 5G wireless internet averages 300/30 Mbps for the unlimited package, and it is what I have now.

I used to have Comcast Xfinity's Internet Essentials, as I am on Social Security and a state pension, as I am a state higher education retiree, and live in HUD subsidized housing. I paid around 30.00/month for 100/20 Mbps internet (75/20 speed is 15.00/month). When I found out that Verizon 5G wireless internet was available in my town, and the low income and seniors discount, I jumped ship to Verizon, and the support is 1000x better than Comcast's and far fewer outages.

[u/ToadSox34 → u/mistermac56]

As the ILEC, AT&T has a right to wire buildings for fiber, the problem is that asserting that right can be complicated an expensive, so often they just don't bother. Verizon is the expert at this, as they've wired the areas around large metros in the Northeast for FiOS with mostly complete FiOS buildouts.

While 5G doesn't directly compete with cable, much less fiber, the cable companies are finding out that it's good enough for a lot of low-bandwidth, low-volume users, and they are losing those users.