US cable company Comcast added 316,000 customers to its Xfinity Mobile MVNO in Q2, with executives using an earnings call to offer assurances over the status of its network hosting agreement with Verizon.
Comcast now has 6 million subscribers to the MVNO service it launched in 2017. Wireless revenue grew 20.4 per cent year-on-year to $869 million in Q2.
Company chiefs faced questions from analysts over its MVNO deal with Verizon, a topic the latter’s CEO Hans Vestberg was also quizzed about when it issued Q2 numbers earlier this week.
David Watson, president and CEO of Comcast Cable, said it has perpetual access to the services it needs from Verizon.
He argued aggressively pairing mobile with its broadband service would boost flagging subscriber numbers for the latter: it lost 20,000 residential broadband subscribers in Q2, leaving it with 29.7 million in total.
Comcast’s mobile play includes pairing 5G service with its millions of Wi-Fi access points to improve coverage and lower the cost of the MVNO agreement by provisioning more of its own backhaul traffic.
Verizon also hosts mobile services for Cox Communications and Charter Communications. CEO Vestberg noted the more connections on its network, the greater the revenue return on its capital investment.
“As long as we see that happening, we will continue the work we’re doing,” he stated.
Wholesale access to Verizon’s mobile network was a condition of a deal to sell AWS spectrum holdings by a joint venture of cable companies struck in 2011
Comcast was part of a joint venture of cable companies which made wholesale access to Verizon’s mobile network part of a deal to sell AWS spectrum in 2011.
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