Comcast reportedly plans significant job cuts in its cable division as the firm continues to lose residential broadband and TV customers. Comcast lost 144,000 residential broadband customers in Q3 2026, up from a 91,000-customer loss in the same quarter a year ago, the company said in its earnings report today.
Comcast historically capitalized on a lack of competition for high-speed wired broadband. But now it faces stronger competition from fixed wireless providers and from fiber providers in parts of its cable territory.
“Fixed wireless remains aggressive and continues to take share, while fiber construction remains elevated, with pockets of irrational pricing and promotional activity,” Comcast co-CEO Mike Cavanagh said today in an earnings call.
Comcast CFO Jason Armstrong said “irrational pricing” from fiber operators includes $30 to $40 monthly broadband offers “in specific markets in the third quarter.” He said $30 to $40 pricing is irrational because deploying fiber costs $1,500 or more per home, and is “getting more expensive with construction costs up as you get into more suburban and rural areas.”
“As we look at the return profile of that, to us, that is irrational competition,” Armstrong said. While he didn’t name any specific competitors, Verizon has been pitching FiOS fiber plans that start at $30 a month. Comcast’s network is a mix of fiber and cable, and it offers fiber-to-the-home in only small portions of its cable territory.
Armstrong said more Comcast customers are leaving when they face “pricing transitions,” apparently referring to the price hikes customers get when promotional offers expire. “We’ve been refining our offers and retention strategies to better manage these transitions and strengthen customer retention,” he said.
Cavanagh said that “satellite is not yet a material factor” in the competition Comcast faces, but that Comcast is focused on “anticipating emerging forms of competition and positioning our business to respond as the market evolves.”
Fewer jobs, more AI agents
After the latest quarterly drop, Comcast has 28.3 million residential broadband customers in the US. Comcast said it has a plan to turn things around.
“We’ve embarked on the most significant operating and cost transformation in our company’s history, with an opportunity we believe will ultimately amount to billions of dollars over time,” Cavanagh said. The organizational changes will result in a “significant charge” of over $1 billion to be applied in the fourth quarter earnings report, Armstrong said.
It appears likely that job cuts will affect Comcast’s famously frustrating customer service division, replacing some number of humans with AI agents that already handle some customer interactions. “As personal AI agents reshape how consumers discover, purchase, and manage services, we’re positioning Comcast to capitalize on that shift,” Armstrong said.
As is typically the case when companies announce layoffs, Comcast said the goal is not merely reducing salary. Cavanagh said Comcast’s plan “goes well beyond cost savings” and will “create a more agile, efficient organization that can compete more effectively and invest more decisively in growth.”
Comcast lost 274,000 video customers in the quarter, up from a 257,000-customer loss in the same quarter last year. Total video customers are down to 10.4 million. Comcast added 368,000 wireless lines, down from a 414,000-line gain last year. It now has 10.6 million wireless lines in its business of offering mobile service to broadband subscribers.
Job cuts target cable division
Bloomberg reported yesterday that “Comcast is planning a significant number of job cuts as part of an overall restructuring of its cable-TV, broadband and wireless businesses.” A Variety report today said the number of job cuts isn’t yet determined, but that “the layoffs are expected to affect the Comcast Cable side of the business, not NBCU divisions,” referring to Comcast’s NBCUniversal subsidiary. Comcast did not provide any specifics on job-cut plans when contacted by Ars today.
Comcast also plans to split itself into two publicly traded companies through a spinoff of NBCUniversal and Sky. The spinoff plan was announced in June and is expected to be completed in mid-2027. Comcast’s company-wide revenue was $29.3 billion in the third quarter, down from $31.2 billion the previous year. Net income rose from $3.33 billion to $3.45 billion.
Comcast’s stock price increased today after beating analyst expectations for its overall earnings, which included a profit from its Peacock streaming service. But it lost more broadband customers than expected and gained fewer wireless lines than expected.
“Comcast’s connectivity-and-platforms revenue fell 2.6 percent in constant currency in the third quarter, to $19.66 billion,” The Wall Street Journal wrote. “That was a steeper loss than what Wall Street had expected. The company also added fewer domestic wireless lines than it did a year earlier, missing analyst estimates.”
Comcast’s total broadband subscribers rose every quarter for 20 years until it reported a net loss of 10,000 residential broadband customers in Q2 2022. In Q1 2025, a net loss of 183,000 residential broadband customers caused Cavanagh to bemoan that the company isn’t “winning in the marketplace.”
Comcast tried to turn things around by providing unlimited data on plans that previously had monthly data caps and by offering a five-year price guarantee. Its five-year price guarantee plans start at $45 a month before taxes and fees. Customer losses continued despite those changes.
Free wireless lines and AI customer service
Comcast provides free wireless lines for a year to its broadband customers, but said this is not an irrational offer. “When we offer a free wireless line, it is against zero capital deployed,” Armstrong said, noting that Comcast resells mobile capacity instead of building its own cellular network. “We don’t have spectrum. We don’t have towers. Our model is an MVNO [Mobile Virtual Network Operator] model.”
Obtaining mobile capacity through Comcast’s MVNO agreement with Verizon isn’t free, of course. But Armstrong said Comcast customers who receive a free wireless line for a year “are converting into paying subscribers within a year to a very rational price point, we think, and our goal is obviously to upsell them over time.”
The price of a basic Comcast mobile line goes from free to $30 a month after one year, and requires a bundle with Comcast home Internet. Armstrong said Comcast is “converting 70 percent of those free lines into paying relationships.”
Armstrong also discussed Comcast’s plan to increase use of AI agents to interact with customers. It’s up to customers to determine whether this improves service or makes things worse, but it will apparently be cheaper for Comcast.
“AI is already embedded across our network to optimize performance, and we’re expanding its application across customer experience through partnerships with Sierra and Cresta,” Armstrong said. “These capabilities are central to our new operating model, enabling us to bring products to market faster, simplifying customer interactions, and deliver a better experience more efficiently. We’ve already reduced customer service contact rates by roughly 20 percent and eliminated more than 30 million service interactions year-to-date versus the prior year.”
Jon BrodkinSenior IT Reporter
Jon BrodkinSenior IT Reporter
Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.
Source: arstechnica.com
