Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ: CMCSA and NASDAQ: CMCSK), founded in 1963, is the largest cable operator in the United States, providing cable television, broadband Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers. Comcast is headquartered in One Comcast Center in Center City, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
History
Comcast was founded as American Cable Systems in 1963 by Ralph J. Roberts, Daniel Aaron, and Julian A. Brodsky based on a recommendation from Pete Musser, who brought the deal to Ralph Roberts to buy his first cable system in Tupelo, Mississippi. The company was incorporated in Pennsylvania in 1969, under the new name Comcast Corporation . The name "Comcast" is portmanteau of the words "Communication" and "Broadcast".
Over a number of years, Comcast became majority owner of Comcast Spectacor, Comcast SportsNet (in Chicago, Michigan, Philadelphia, Washington DC/Baltimore, MD, the San Francisco Bay Area, the Pacific Northwest and metro Sacramento), as well as E! Entertainment Television, Style Network, G4, The Golf Channel and Versus (formerly the Outdoor Life Network). In 2006, Comcast started a new sports channel – SportsNet New York – in the greater New York City region, in partnership with the New York Mets and Time Warner Cable.
Comcast also has a variety network known as Comcast Network, available exclusively to Comcast and Cablevision subscribers. The channel shows news, sports, and entertainment and places emphasis in Philadelphia and the Baltimore/Washington, D.C. areas, though the channel is also available in New York, Pittsburgh, and Richmond. In August 2004, Comcast started a channel called CET (Comcast Entertainment Television), available only to Colorado Comcast subscribers, and focusing on Life in Colorado. It also carries some NHL & NBA Games when Altitude Sports & Entertainment is carrying the NBA or NHL. In January 2006, CET became the primary channel for Colorado's Emergency Alert System in the Denver Metro Area.
The UK division was sold to NTL in 1998. After the sale of their cellular division to SBC Communications of San Antonio and the acquisition of Greater Philadelphia Cablevision in 1999, Comcast and MediaOne announced a $60 billion merger which did not occur until three years later (as AT&T Broadband).
In 2002, Comcast paid the University of Maryland $25 million for naming rights to the new basketball arena built on the College Park campus, named Comcast Center.
On January 3, 2005, Comcast announced that it would become the anchor tenant in a new skyscraper in downtown Philadelphia, to be named the Comcast Center, not to be confused with the Maryland arena mentioned above. The 975 ft (297 m) skyscraper is officially the tallest building in Pennsylvania.
In December 2005, Comcast announced the creation of Comcast Interactive Media (CIM), a new division focused on online media.
Presently, Comcast serves a total of 24.6 million cable customers, 16.3 million digital cable customers, 14.4 million high-speed Internet customers, and 5.6 million voice customers. The company employs over 100,000 people. Comcast is headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and also has corporate offices in Atlanta, Detroit, Denver,and Manchester, NH.
Comcast announced in May 2007 and launched in September 2008 a dashboard called SmartZone. Customers can use the service most likely sometime that year according to the Daily Herald near Chicago, quoting a Comcast spokesperson. HP or Hewlett-Packard led "design, creation and management". Collaboration and unified messaging technology came from open-source vendor Zimbra, according to IDG News Service, who spoke with a Comcast spokesperson the previous year. "SmartZone users will be able to send and receive e-mail, listen to their voicemail messages online and forward that information via e-mail to others, send instant messages and video instant messages and merge their contacts into one address book", according to IDG. IDG also noted Cloudmark spam and phishing protection and Trend Micro antivirus. The address book is Comcast Plaxo software.
Comcast announced for the end of 2008 a new network congestion management technique, after receiving no complaints over the summer in five market trials which were held in Warrenton, Virginia; Chambersburg, Pennsylvania; Colorado Springs, Colorado; Lake View, Florida; and East Orange, Florida.
As of October 30, 2008 ( 2008 -10-30 ) Comcast signed a product development and distribution agreement with ABC Radio that will bring branded content from E! Entertainment, Style Network and G4 to terrestrial radio affiliates.
As of December 3, 2009 ( 2009 -12-03 ) Comcast announced an acquisition of 51% share in NBC Universal to create the largest media conglomerate in the world.
On December 1, 2009, CNBC reported that a tentative agreement had been reached between Comcast and GE. The deal was formally announced on December 3, 2009. Under the agreement, NBC Universal would be 51% owned by Comcast and 49% by GE. Comcast is to pay $6.5 billion cash to GE. Comcast will also contribute $7.5 billion in programming including regional sports networks and cable channels such as Golf Channel and E! Entertainment Television. GE plans to use some of the funds, $5.8 billion, to buy out Vivendi's 20% minority stake in NBC Universal. After the transaction completes, Comcast will reserve the right to buy out GE's share at certain times. GE will also reserve the right to force the sale of their stake within the first seven years. The deal is subject to regulatory approval.
Assets
Cable television
Comcast has 25 million television subscribers in 39 of the fifty U.S. states.
Internet
Comcast has 15 million Internet service customers.
Comcast offers downstream speeds of up to 1, 6, 8, 12, 15, 20, 30 or 50 Mbit/s and upstream speeds of .384, 1, 2, 5, 7 or 10 Mbit/s for standard home connections. These differing speed options are made possible by loading a particular configuration file into the modem or banding channels together through DOCSIS 3.0. Comcast's "PowerBoost" delivers bursts for all but their highest-end and lowest-end tiers, allowing subscribers to use all excess cable node capacity to speed up the first few seconds of downloads. According to the Comcast High Speed Internet terms of service, customers are provided with dynamic IP addresses.
Comcast has a policy of terminating broadband customers who use "excessive bandwidth," a term the company refused to define in its terms of service, which once said only that a customer's use should not "represent (in the sole judgment of Comcast) an overly large burden on the network." Company responses to press inquiries suggest a limit of several hundred gigabytes per month. In September 2007, Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas said the company defines "excessive use" as the equivalent of 30,000 songs, 250,000 pictures or 13 million emails in a month. Other company statements have said the limit varied from month to month, depending on the capacity of specific cable nodes, and that it affected only the top 1/10th of the top 1 percent of high-speed Internet customers.
On August 28, 2008, Comcast confirmed the rumors of a controversial 250 GB per month cap on downloads, set to go into effect on October 1, 2008. As such, Comcast has changed their Network Management page to reflect the new policy. On September 4, 2008 Comcast sued the FCC over findings that the previous Network Management policy illegally interfered with BitTorrent traffic on the Comcast network.
The cap combines both upload and download for the total limit. If a user exceeds the cap, on a first offense, a warning email and/or phone call will be issued with information on how to track bandwidth usage by suggesting software monitoring programs. On the second offense, the user will have their services terminated for one year. The monitoring window is from the first day of the month to the last day of the month.
Telephone
Comcast tallies 6.4 million household telephone service accounts, making it the United States' third-largest telephone provider.
Business Class services
In addition to residential consumers, Comcast also serves businesses as customers, specifically targeting the segment of businesses with fewer than 20 employees. In 2009, Minneapolis – Saint Paul became the first city that Comcast Business Class offered 100 Mbps Internet service, which includes Microsoft Communication Services.
Programming
Comcast not only delivers third-party programming content to its own customers, but also produces content that is delivered to both its subscribers and customers of other competing television services. This is a way to diversify Comcast's revenue to both sides of the content/delivery equation. Fully- or partially-owned Comcast programming includes CN8, Comcast SportsNet, SportsNet New York, MLB Network Comcast Sports Southeast/Charter Sports Southeast, E! Entertainment, Style Network, G4, Versus, The Golf Channel,
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