60% of Comcast’s network traffic comes from 3% of its geography, CEO says
Comcast is getting ready to activate Philadelphia as a trial market for cellular offload, as it explores what combination of its existing MVNO relationship with Verizon and its own cellular CBRS network will provide the right coverage and cost.
As part of Comcast’s overall business strategy, “We’re only scratching the surface in wireless,” said Brian Roberts, chairman and CEO of the company, said in remarks at Goldman Sachs Communicopia + Tech conference. And that means both inside and outside the home.
Comcast has 13x more devices attached to Wi-Fi now than five years ago in 2018, he said, and now serves a billion in-home connected devices. Whether that figure sees consistent or exponential growth in the coming years, “Wi-Fi will power so much,” he continued.
Meanwhile, Comcast has seen broadband usage almost double in the past few years due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and the average non-linear-video customer is using about 700 GB per month of data, he explained—compared to about 17 GB for mobile users. Comcast’s investments in DOCSIS 4.0 will get the company to a place of bidirectional 10 Gbps network speeds, he noted, which will be important as more content, especially sports, moves to streaming-only and applications such as augmented reality, home healthcare and gaming as well as adoption of artificial intelligence increases the volume of network traffic.
Is convergence a product or a network strategy, Roberts was asked by host Brett Feldman. Both, he said—a bundle of products, but also a network strategy that Comcast is approaching with a “vastly lower” and “capital light” cost structure because so much of their customers’ usage is in the home via Wi-Fi, combined with Comcast’s MVNO relationship with Verizon for mobility. Roberts said that Comcast has been able to put “a modest amount of capital” into prepping the Philadelphia market for a trial of cellular offload onto its own network (the company bought a significant chunk of CBRS Priority Access Licenses and has been testing CBRS in paPhiladelphia since 2018). Roberts said that Comcast has calculated that 60% of its network traffic comes from just 3% of its geography—meaning that it can put forth a very targeted offload strategy.
“If this works, we’re going to continue to look at more markets,” he said.
