We’ll be opening this year’s Web 2 Summit with an interview of Brian Roberts, CEO of Comcast. I’ve asked Brian to come for the past three years, and he’s always had a conflict. In those last few years Comcast has continued to grow, in particular when it comes to its footprint in the digital world.
Besides its role as a major cable television player, Comcast is one of the largest providers of broadband in the United States, and as such plays a major role in nearly every story now playing out across the Web ecosystem. Net neutrality? Check. Bandwidth caps? Check. Migration of television models to online? Check. Learning how to become a smart brand by joining the conversation online? Check.
More on Comcast and Brian:
Under his leadership, Comcast has grown into a Fortune 100 company with $34.3 billion in revenues, 24.2 million customers and 100,000 employees. Comcast’s content networks and investments include E! Entertainment Television, Style Network, Golf Channel, VERSUS, G4, PBS KIDS Sprout, TV One, and ten sports networks operated by Comcast Sports Group and Comcast Interactive Media, which develops and operates Comcast’s Internet businesses, including Comcast.net.
Comcast Interactive is an interesting play as well – a distinct entity with a number of newly purchased assets (Fandango, Plaxo, Daily Candy, etc) that may or may not find itself competing directly with Yahoo, MSN, and AOL someday, not to mention Google. It’s clear to me that one of the next great battles online will be for the real estate currently known as your television (the other, of course, is your mobile device).
I will be covering all of this and more with Brian, but as I do every year, I really seek your help with what to ask him on stage. So what do you want to hear from Brian Roberts?
Comcast is starting to offer Internet access on mobile devices via its High-Speed 2go service. The battle for our mobile device has begun, even if it is currently repackaged Clearwire service. How does Comcast see mobile complementing or replacing its home and business services?
Why can’t Comcast grow its customer service ability along with its core business?
Many Comcast customers don’t use Comcast because they like it, but because they have to. Comcast hasn’t been able to get my service working correctly for a year now, and their customer service is abysmal.
Why doesn’t Mr. Roberts place any sort of value on this? Doesn’t he realize that his customer base has no loyalty?
Most people don’t realize that we do have metered, slow release, cable internet here in the US. It’s way more than a stretch to call what Comcast has, at my house, broadband. I’m surprised that Ben Stein hasn’t come a knocking at my door to tell me that the Comcast fiber in my neighborhood should be strung door to door by the time all the snow melts in the Alps.
The object of their game is to not loose cable customers to free HD content choice via real broadband.
The bottom line is the cable people own the digital roads thus were all screwed. I wish the Tea Party peeps would understand that they are being brain washed & ripped off at the same time via cable…
That’s my opinion.
Thanks.
A significant percentage of total studio profits are generated by their home entertainment divisions’ packaged media (DVD/BRD) sales of film & TV content. Despite Comcast’s reach into the home and its capability to deliver VoD profitably, studios have been unwilling to risk eroding their packaged media profits in favor of narrowing their windows and licensing VoD releases earlier or simultaneous to DVD release. Most of the studios are also actively involved in internet digital distribution and VoD ventures and companies such as Apple, Netflix, Amazon and Blockbuster are already well positioned as online content retailers to take significant share of the digital download market. It would be interesting to know how Brian Roberts is positioning Comcast to succeed in this emerging digital distribution market environment against studio-backed ventures on the one hand and against the online content retailers on the other.
It is my ultimate goal that I continue to train, coach, and inspire others to lead from the front and provide consistently superior service to one another. Through “human collaborative” efforts & good old fashioned networking, I seek to continue to facilitate creativity, communication, and choices to those I meet in my personal & professional endeavors. Everyone is someone’s customer!
@Antony Mascovich- as an employee of Comcast I can guarantee you that the level of care and service that our subscribers receive is of the utmost importance to Mr. Roberts, but more importantly it has to be important to each of us front line employees that are directly responsible for your satisfaction.
I personally apologize Mr. Mascovich that there is an issue that we have not been able to resolve for you, but because of out cries such as yours, we have not only made the options limitless for you to reach someone anytime, day or night to have your issues resolved i.e. (We_Can_Help@cable.comcast.com ), (http://www.comcast.com/Corporate/Customers/HelpSupport.html ), (http://blog.comcast.com/ ), we have even changed our companies credo to affirm that we are first and foremost customer focused and are genuinely concerned about the retention of our subscribers.
I for one am not just a Comcast employee, but I am a customer as are most of our employees. It is my hope that you understand what matters to you matters to me, as I am a subscriber just like you! Please let me know if there is anything I can do to assist you.
Kind Regards,
L. Fisher
Given that you refuse to allow DirecTV to carry Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia and Versus, why should any sporting league choose to broadcast on Comcast-owned networks?
What is the most important reason for the U.S. to roll out nationwide broadband networks? How will Comcast extend the support provided by possible government incentive programs?