Comcast Business Nears $10B in Annual Revenue and Accelerates Enterprise Growth but Faces Headwinds from Competitive and Macroeconomic Pressures

2025 Comcast Business Analyst Conference, Philadelphia, April 2-3, 2025 — A select group of industry analysts gathered at the Comcast Center in Philadelphia to hear from Comcast Business leaders about the unit’s progress and success with its sales and go-to-market strategies. The central theme of the event was “Everything, Everywhere, All at Once,” which reflects Comcast Business’s ability to provide solutions to its customers through advancements in areas including AI implementation, network technologies, industry partnerships, and acquisitions, including Masergy and Nitel. The event was hosted by CNBC Senior Markets Correspondent Dominic Chu and included a State of the Business session from Comcast Business President Edward Zimmermann, a Strategy & Vision session from Comcast Business Chief Product Officer Bob Victor, and an update on Comcast’s network from Chief Network Officer Elad Nafshi. Also included were panel discussions with senior leadership as well as speaker sessions featuring industry partners Cisco and Intelisys and a Comcast Business customer within the brewing industry.

 

TBR perspective

Since its inception in 2006, Comcast Business has consistently grown into a more formidable competitor in the B2B telecom space. Most of this growth has stemmed from the SMB segment, where Comcast Business’ superior DOCSIS-based, hybrid-fiber coax (HFC) fixed broadband offerings were priced right compared to non-fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) telco offerings and addressed demand for more bandwidth. Comcast Business’ strategy has evolved over the past decade to target additional growth segments including midmarket businesses and multinational enterprises via the operator’s managed services portfolio, strategic acquisitions including Masergy, and partnerships with global operators spanning 130 countries.
 
Other key growth drivers over the past decade include Comcast Business’ increasing focus on the public sector, including federal agencies, as well as the launch of portfolio segments including Comcast Business Mobile and value-added services in areas including SD-WAN, security and unified communications.
 
The success of Comcast Business’ growth strategies has enabled the company to essentially reach its long-term goal of generating $10 billion in annual revenue (Comcast Business generated $9.7 billion in revenue for full-year 2024). Comcast Business, which increased total revenue by about 5% in 2024, is also outpacing incumbent operators competing in the B2B market in revenue growth as service providers including AT&T, Verizon and Lumen continue to face significant revenue erosion from customers disconnecting from legacy data and voice services.
 
Despite its recent strong momentum, Comcast Business will encounter obstacles as it tries to increase revenue due to headwinds including competition from the expansion of fixed wireless access (FWA) and FTTP services, and macroeconomic pressures that will cause businesses to optimize spending on connectivity services. Despite its ability to sustain revenue growth in 2024, driven by increased revenue from enterprise solutions and higher average rates from small business customers, Comcast Business lost a net of 16,000 customer relationships in 2024 (compared to customer relationship net additions of 17,000 in 2023 and 52,000 in 2022).
 
TBR attributes rising B2B FWA adoption, especially for Verizon and T-Mobile, as the primary driver of the net loss as more businesses are gravitating to FWA for its cost savings over traditional fixed broadband services as well as its greater ease of installation, which is helping to support companies seeking to quickly launch new branch locations. Comcast Business will also face competitive pressures from operators including AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon that are expanding their FTTP footprints via organic builds and acquisitions, which will give these operators new opportunities to offer converged service plans combining mobile and broadband services. Comcast Business will also continue to face pressures from businesses continuing to migrate off of pay-TV and VoIP (voice over IP) services.
 
We expect that current macroeconomic challenges, including mass layoffs within the private and public sectors and uncertainty around tariff impacts, will create headwinds for Comcast Business and the overall U.S. B2B telecom market. Though network connectivity solutions such as broadband will remain essential to businesses, companies will need to optimize spending to counter macroeconomic pressures.
 
TBR believes these challenges will require Comcast Business to become more dependent on providing a stronger value proposition to retain and grow its customer base in addition to its reliance on the strengths of its network and solutions portfolio. Comcast Business is also addressing these industry shifts by evolving its portfolio of adjacent solutions in areas including secure networking, cybersecurity, and managed IT services to augment revenue from its core broadband services.

Impact and opportunities

Comcast Business is leveraging AI to optimize its network performance and sales and customer service capabilities

Sessions throughout the event discussed how deeper AI implementation will enable Comcast to enhance capabilities such as network performance and sales and customer service, thereby improving overall efficiency and customer experience. For instance, AI integration is enabling Comcast to automate over 99.7% of all software changes that it is making on its network, which is supporting network self-healing capabilities that can quickly resolve outages. These capabilities will help Comcast Business to more effectively retain customers as recent disruptions experienced by rivals, such as AT&T’s two major prolonged network outages in 2024, have resulted in customer losses and tarnished brand images for impacted operators.
 
AI is also enabling Comcast to enhance the cybersecurity of its network, including through the development of a next-generation firewall embedded into the network, which leverages GenAI and does not require dedicated CPE (customer premises equipment).
 
The vendor is also focused on training its customer care and sales teams to more effectively leverage AI to improve customer support and enhance operations. Comcast Business is increasing the number of AIOps use cases and applying AI and machine learning (ML) across its managed solutions platform to improve service delivery, assurance and management, both for customers and the internal teams that support customers (e.g., help desk, network operations center [NOC] and security operations center [SOC]).
 
Comcast expects AI to not only improve network and operational efficiencies but also provide significant revenue-generation opportunities, though the company is still in the early stages of developing strategies to do so. For instance, Comcast’s edge computing resources enable the company to support ultra-low latency speeds of less than 1 millisecond to many of its customers. These capabilities will position Comcast to optimize connectivity and user experience for future advanced AI applications in areas such as AR/VR that will be more dependent on ultra-low latency, though current AI applications such as ChatGPT are not as dependent on ultra-low latency as they are mainly text-based.

Comcast Business continues to accelerate its data speeds to incentivize customers, though industry pricing pressures will hamper connection growth

Throughout the event, Comcast Business promoted its accelerating data speeds, which are aided by network advancements such as DOCSIS 4.0 and mid-split upgrades to Comcast’s HFC network. Enhancements to Comcast Business’ connectivity portfolio include extending the availability of its Dedicated Internet solution and upgrading the service to provide symmetrical download and upload speeds up to 200Mbps over HFC or up to 400Gbps over fiber.
 
Comcast expects to accelerate its Dedicated Internet solution to reach symmetrical speeds of 300Mbps over HFC and reach a total of over three million passings this year. Other updates to the Dedicated Internet solution include adding a network reliability guarantee, which provides SLAs ensuring 99.99% network uptime, and enhanced proactive network monitoring, which enables IT teams to optimize performance.
 
TBR believes these updates will help to attract clients with bandwidth-intensive workloads, especially customers with more stringent SLA requirements necessitating minimal network downtime. However, TBR also recognizes that competitive pricing and the overall value proposition provided by operators are becoming more influential factors in contract wins within the B2B market. As evidenced by the robust uptake of FWA, small businesses are especially concerned with the value they are getting for the price paid, and they are migrating to lower-cost broadband offerings to obtain internet access that more closely meets their needs and aligns with what they are willing to pay.
 
T-Mobile and Verizon are feeding this market shift to “rightsized bandwidth” through clever marketing and customer education about what businesses actually need. Comcast Business will need to demonstrate why its cutting-edge broadband offerings are necessary for its customers in order to justify the premium pricing. It also has an opportunity to further strengthen the value proposition of its value-added services when combined with its core broadband services. Comcast Business Mobile is a key portfolio segment Comcast Business can further leverage to combat pressures from rivals’ FWA services and converged service bundles.
 
Though Comcast Business Mobile connections are not reported by Comcast, TBR believes just a small portion of Comcast Business customers are currently enrolled in the service as only 12% of Comcast’s residential broadband customer were enrolled in Xfinity Mobile in 4Q24. Heavier promotional activity, such as offering free lines for a limited time, could help Comcast Business Mobile compete more aggressively against rival B2B smartphone plans while creating a stickier ecosystem to retain high-value broadband customers long-term. Comcast Business Mobile’s impact is limited to the SMB market, however, as the brand supports a maximum of 20 lines per business customer under Comcast’s current MVNO agreement with Verizon.

Comcast will strengthen its enterprise business and expand sales channels via the Nitel acquisition

The analyst event coincided with Comcast Business closing its acquisition of Chicago-based managed service provider Nitel on April 1 from private equity firm Cinven. Nitel is a NaaS (Network as a Service) provider offering solutions in areas such as networking (including SD-WAN and SASE [Secure Access Service Edge]), cloud services and cybersecurity.
 
Through the purchase, Comcast Business will expand its footprint in the midmarket and enterprise customer segments and gain Nitel’s 6,600 clients across the U.S. within verticals including financial services, healthcare and education. Acquiring Nitel also enables Comcast Business to expand its channel distribution strategy to more effectively target new sales opportunities within the midmarket and enterprise segments.
 
Comcast Business is also gaining AI and software tools from the Nitel acquisition that will enable it to enhance its sales and customer service capabilities. These benefits include robust orchestration capabilities, an instant quoting tool that makes it easier to price and establish deals across multiple vendors and sites, and a digital dashboard that offers a single-pane-of-glass view of deployments.

Conclusion

Comcast Business remains in a relatively strong position within the B2B market as the company continues to outpace its competitors in revenue growth and will continue to expand its client base within the midmarket and large enterprise segments by leveraging its Masergy and Nitel acquisitions. Comcast Business also has an opportunity to increase revenue by refining its international strategy and more deeply leveraging assets — such as its managed services portfolio, partnerships with global operators across 130 countries, and numerous acquisitions including Sky, Masergy, Nitel, Deep Blue Communications and Blueface — that enable it to support multinational corporations.
 
However, SMB, which accounts for the majority of Comcast Business’ revenue, is becoming a more challenging segment in which to grow market share as FWA competition and macroeconomic challenges lead to spending constraints. These headwinds will require Comcast Business to become more focused on enhancing its value proposition to retain and grow its SMB client base and combat competitive pressures in the market.