"Size really does matter", said John R. Alchin, Executive Vice President, speaking at the Banc of America Investment Conference in San Francisco. Comcast's 21.5 million subscribers has enabled it to cut better deals with content providers, such as MGM and the National Football League, while increasing its advertising power. Some highlights of the presentation:
- Comcast's video on demand service currently has a content library that includes 7,000 movies and over 30,000 TV episodes
- HDTV is now available across 90% of the plant and 600,000 HDTV boxes have already been deployed
- Comcast has the capacity for all local HDTV channels in all markets
- Comcast is working with Gemstar and Microsoft on advanced On-Screen Guides
- Comcast is still "setting the stage" for a major VoIP rollout in 2005. The company aid 50% of its plant will be VoIP-ready by year end 2004, and 95% of the plant will be VoIP-ready by year end 2005
- VoIP features will include E911 capabilities, battery back-up and one bill integration with other Comcast services.
- Comcast currently has 1.2 million circuit-switched telephony subscribers
- For 2004, Comcast will have generated $2 billion in free cash flow
- Comcast Cable ended Q2 2004 with more than 6.0 million subscribers, a 36.8% increase from the same quarter last year. During quarter, Comcast Cable added 327,000 high-speed Internet subscribers resulting in a penetration rate of 16.1% of available homes. Comcast Cable added more than 1.1 million homes to its cable modem footprint in quarter, and this service is now available to 37.3 million, or 92.6%, of homes passed. Average monthly revenue per high-speed Internet subscriber was $43.52 in Q2, in line with Q2 2003 and a $1.07 increase from the $42.45 reported.
