Thursday, April 27, 2006

Comcast gets a boost from their triple play package - finally!

Comcast shares bounced up 5% today as they announced some pretty impressive numbers for their latest quarter on the back of their hi-riding new triple play package of TV, hi-speed Internet access and telephony (Internet based and dead cheap).

The results echo similar strong performance by smaller operators, such as Cablevision, and suggest that customers are keen to sign up for bundled telephone, internet and video packages. Der, I wonder why?!

So now you have the real national battle for triple and then quadruple play ready to rock and roll. And this battle will drive down the price of TV, Internet access and telephony even further, as Comcast and Time Warner Cable slug it out with AT&T and Verizon. Expect DirecTV to sit somewhere in the middle and try to differentiate on price and content while waiting for their own satellite triple play to launch next year.

The real question for investors is who will win the triple/quadruple play battle - cable operators or telco's. Well, for now I would say that they'll will. In the US top 5 expect a couple of cable leaders and a couple of telco's.

So Comcast is well positioned as the US' largest cable company - even though they are late to the table on their triple play. But now that they have it out, they are raking in the customers and it is improving their core cable TV franchise as well.

No wonder their shares bounced up. They will really deserve a further bounce when Comcast proves that they can convert most of their 22M odd cable customers to the triple play and not just the early adopters.

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