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TECHNOLOGY A23
Thursday 4 February 2016
Comcast loses fewest TV customers in 8 years
TALI ARBEL This Thursday, July 23, 2015, photo, shows the Comcast building sign at Rockefeller Center, in New say what the price would
AP Technology Writer York. Comcast reports financial earnings on Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2016. be. Rolling a faster service
NEW YORK (AP) — Comcast out nationwide should help
is trumpeting its best year Associated Press Comcast continue to grow
for traditional TV services Internet customers, says
in nearly a decade, even are losing fewer customers ternet without needing a And like other cable com- Nomura’s Anthony DiCle-
though it continues to lose overall than they have in cable box. panies, Comcast has seen mente.
TV subscribers. years. That’s come as satel- On a call with analysts, its Internet-access business Looking to the future, Com-
As the number of tradi- lite-TV providers and phone Comcast said that 75 per- grow. It added 1.4 million cast also said it may buy
tional TV customers de- companies like Verizon cent of its new TV custom- Internet customers in 2015, up wireless airwaves in the
clines across the industry, and AT&T do worse. (AT&T ers were “higher-end,” including 460,000 in the Oc- government’s upcoming
Comcast is stemming its bought satellite provider Di- bigger bundles. And the tober-December quarter. auction, which could help
losses by luring them with recTV in July.) company defended the That’s largely due to a it offer cellphone service.
new TV-Internet packages, This year could be the traditional bundle. Steve lack of choice for speedy The company has said that
while keeping TV custom- year that cable compa- Burke, the head of NBCUni- Internet access at home. it is “exploring” what kind of
ers around for longer with nies starts adding back TV versal, said the big bundle Two-thirds of the country’s wireless service it could do.
the help of a fancier cable customers, even as tradi- is “going to continue to be homes have just one op- Any cell plan from Com-
box. The company also tional TV customers overall a very good business for a tion or none at all at the cast is expected to rely on
says recent investments in drop, says Morgan Stanley very long time.” speed the Federal Com- Wi-Fi, but last year the com-
customer service, long a analyst Ben Swinburne. The Comcast is also still rolling munications Commission pany also confirmed that it
blemish on its reputation, cable companies are get- out its updated X1 cable has deemed broadband: was activating an option
have helped. ting a boost from their rela- box, which the company 25 megabits per second. it had to resell cell service
Comcast said Wednesday tively fast Internet offerings says has helped it hold on Comcast typically pro- from Verizon’s network.
that it added 89,000 TV and from skinny bundles to customers longer. X1 us- motes Internet speeds rang- As for Comcast’s NBCUni-
customers in the last three — cheaper packages with ers also tend to spend more ing from 25 to 150 megabits versal business, TV ad rev-
months of 2015, which it fewer TV channels. on extra DVRs, meaning per second. The company enue fell 2 percent to $9.18
said was its best quarter Comcast’s skinny bundles more money for Comcast. announced Tuesday that billion for the year. For the
since the October-De- include Internet Plus — lo- Comcast says 61 percent it will offer gigabit Internet quarter, ad revenue was
cember period of 2006. For cal TV stations, the Internet of its new video customers service — or about 1,000 largely unchanged at $854
the full year, Comcast lost and HBO — and a service in the fourth quarter got X1, megabits — in five cities million at cable channels
36,000 TV customers, the called Stream, which de- and that 30 percent of its this year through a modem like Bravo, CNBC and USA
smallest drop since its an- livers channels over the In- customer base has it. upgrade, although it didn’t and rose 7 percent to $1.78
nual string of TV customer billion for NBC and Tele-
losses that began in 2007. mundo. The movie business
Other cable companies got a boost from DVD and
are improving, too, even as on-demand sales of hit Uni-
cable bills rise overall, and versal movies such as “Ju-
people spend more time rassic World,” released the-
watching video online. atrically earlier in the year.
Time Warner Cable posted Company-wide profit rose
a small gain of 32,000 TV more than 2 percent to
customers for 2015, the first $1.97 billion, or 79 cents per
year it’s added TV subscrib- share, in the fourth quar-
ers since 2006. ter. Adjusted for one-time
Craig Moffett of MoffettNa- costs, per-share earnings
thanson Research wrote came to 81 cents. Revenue
that even as cord-cutting rose 8.5 percent to $19.2
has “dramatically acceler- billion.
ated,” with TV customers Its shares rose $1.84, or 3.4
dropping nearly 1 percent percent, to $56.43 in mid-
a year, cable companies day trading Wednesday. Its
like Comcast, Time Warner shares are up almost 2 per-
Cable, Charter and Cox cent over the past year.q
U.S. to rework arms control rule on exporting hacker tools
TAMI ABDOLLAH curity activities, according which governs the highly activities,” according to a that problems with the rule
Associated Press to a letter made public technical world of export letter from the National Se- may lie in the language it-
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Tuesday. controls for arms and cer- curity Council’s Senior Di- self, which would require a
U.S. government is rewriting Industry groups and law- tain technologies, the Unit- rector for Legislative Affairs, renegotiation of the 2013
a proposal under arms con- makers have raised fears ed States agreed in 2013 to Caroline Tess. Tess said the agreement to limit such
trol rules from 20 years ago that overly broad lan- restrict tools related to cy- White House has intensified tools.
to make it simpler to export guage aimed at limiting ber “intrusion software” that its discussion with U.S. offi- Efforts to come up with a
tools related to hacking the spread of such hacking could fall into the hands of cials and industry and that workable U.S. rule have
and surveillance software tools would have unintend- repressive regimes. the Commerce Depart- highlighted the difficulty of
since they are also used to ed negative consequenc- The Obama administra- ment will not issue a final applying the export con-
secure computer networks. es for national cybersecu- tion agrees that “keeping rule without an additional trols restricting physical
The White House said it sup- rity and research. these technologies from il- round of public comment items to a virtual world that
ports making cyber intru- As one of the 41 mem- legitimate actors must not on a revised draft version. relies on the speedy free
sion tools available over- ber countries of the 1996 come at the expense of Langevin, however, said flow of information for net-
seas for legitimate cyberse- Wassenaar Arrangement, legitimate cybersecurity in a statement Tuesday work security. q
