Comcast says the company's new Xfinity Mobile wireless service has already surpassed a quarter of a million subscribers. While those numbers are little more than a sneeze to major wireless carriers -- or Comcast's 22.5 million TV subscribers and 25.1 million broadband customers -- the additions show decent traction for a service Comcast hasn't tried all that hard to sell. XFinity wireless piggybacks on Comcast's footprint of 18 million Wi-Fi hotspots, but uses Verizon’s cellular network as a backup.
At launch, Comcast made it pretty clear that the service would be primarily a vessel used to upsell existing customers to new services, and wouldn't be a serious competitor with companies like AT&T and Verizon. Limited marketing of the service tends to reflect that.
Comcast's service offers existing triple play customers wireless phone service for $45 per line for unlimited (users get throttled to 1.5 Mbps after 20 GB) data, text and voice. This same service is $65 per month if users only subscribe to Comcast broadband service, making it abundantly clear that Comcast's primary goal with the effort is to upsell users to additional services.
Comcast is also offering an option where users can pay $12 per GB of cellular data across all lines on an account. Under this option, Comcast took a page from other providers' playbooks, and will allow users to only pay for what they use. Comcast says folks in a single home can mix and match unlimited and per gig plans, and switch between the options without penalty.
“Our newest connectivity business, Xfinity Mobile, really highlights the value of our broadband service by bundling access to the best high-speed internet data with a unique wireless offering,” Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said on the company's earnings call. “We are pleased with the early results, surpassing 250,000 customer lines in a short period of time since our launch in May, and we are poised to scale the product from here.”
Comcast's wireless service is expected to be mirrored by a similar service by Charter that should arrive sometime in 2018. The two companies recently
struck a partnership aimed at coordinating 5G research and handset contracts. If these MVNO-esque efforts pay dividends, many believe the two companies may work in unison to push more seriously into the wireless space.