Comcast Corp. is raising prices for pay television service and internet access by about 3%, citing rising programming costs and investments in its broadband network.
The increases will take effect with January bills, a spokesman said Wednesday. They’ll add to the monthly average of about $129 that Comcast gets from subscribers.
The largest US pay-TV provider, Comcast joins other companies that have increased prices even as the number of customers stalls or falls, the result of competition in broadband and from streamers like Netflix Inc. Both AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. raised prices earlier this year.
Comcast will raise the price for internet-only service by $3 a month, the Philadelphia-based company said. The increase in pay-TV prices will vary by market to cover higher fees for regional sports and local broadcasts.
“Rising programming costs continue to drive the highest increase in customers’ bills,” a Comcast spokesman said in an emailed statement. “We’re working hard to manage these costs.”
Cord-cutting and increasing competition have eroded Comcast’s traditional customer base. The company, which owns Xfinity, the NBCUniversal media empire and SkyTV, lost 490,000 cable-TV customers in the third quarter, part of an ongoing trend as consumers switch to services like Netflix.
The company also lost 18,000 broadband subscribers in the period, with nearly all of those residential customers.
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