It’s still early days for Comcast’s fledgling wireless service, Xfinity Mobile, whichstarted signing up customers back in May. But during Thursday’s earnings call, executives took the time to share some initial observations about how the rollout is going. One of the most interesting of those was the revelation that customers are actually trending away from Comcast’s unlimited data offering in favor of its “By the Gig” option.
According to Comcast Cable CEO David Watson, Xfinity Mobile is scaling well on an operational level as the service launches across the company’s footprint. Watson added about half of customers who are onboarding are doing so via Comcast’s digital channel, which he touted as an easy experience for customers.
But Watson also notes Xfinity Mobile customers are bucking the trend toward unlimited data seen in the wireless industry, choosing the “By the Gig” option instead. That choice allows customers to pay $12 per GB for the data they use each month rather than shelling out the $65 per month the unlimited plan costs.
“There’s real value (in) ‘By the Gig,’” Watson comments. “Most of our customers are taking By the Gig versus unlimited. So we can do both. And the partnership with Verizon is going well. And so early response from customers is extremely positive. They like the service. They like the value. They like just how easy this is.”
But while the Xfinity Mobile rollout is going smoothly and presents bundling opportunities, Comcast Corp CEO Brian Roberts says the operator doesn’t have a real interest to become more involved in wireless than it already is.
“While it’s still early days, the customer feedback confirms our belief that we have an attractive proposition in the market,” Roberts reports. “(But) no disrespect to wireless, it’s a tough business. And our strategy of MVNO, we really like what we’re doing – and just it’s very, very early with Xfinity Mobile. And our early employee results and our first set of customers really improves a lot of the things we hoped it would improve. It will be a long road, but I don’t see something happening in that industry that we envy a position that we don’t have today.”
