Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts told analysts during Thursday’s earnings call that there’s a correlation between how well his company’s HSD business is doing and the growth in streaming media. Comcast added 487,000 HSD subs in 4Q06, up 12 percent over the previous year. From the SeekingAlpha transcript: “Streaming video over the Internet is a great driver of the growth of high-speed Internet. I don’t think there’s any coincidence that we had our strongest year in high-speed Internet and the growth of video on the Internet. People are attracted to it more, it’s easier, it’s fun, and the kind of things that people are doing online continue to be the YouTubes of the world, I think I saw a statistic that 4 percent of all the bits going across high-speed Internet lines at Comcast is YouTube. We don’t view that as a bad thing. We view that as a great thing in terms of the core video business versus a differentiated broadband business.”
Roberts also said Comcast is working with programmers on broadband options that enhance, not replace, television—similar to efforts with VOD.
Comcast Interactive Media: “You’re going to see and hear more from them in 2007. The whole focus is video centric and also, on an integrated product experience, what we call cross-platform where you’ll look to Comcast, just as it worked with Triple Play, you’ll look to Comcast to bring you integrated video experience that is working on all devices. Nobody today connects to as many televisions as we do. We think that’s a great asset, and bringing that back to your PC, back to your wireless devices, back throughout your home network, and that’s part of what we’re working on, as you also layer in communications services and you have that experienced bundle. That is not yet happening, that’s for anybody, and we think we have as good a chance to succeed in that as anyone out there and we are working hard at it.”
iPhone: In response to a question about CES: “Probably the short answer is no, I did not see anything that was so wow that would change business as usual. I think if anything, I, like many others, are waiting to see the iPhone, which wasn’t even at CES. But I don’t think that has a meaningful impact on our business that I can see in ’07 or any short-term.”
Related:
-- Earnings: Comcast Profit Tripled In 4Q