Comcast Corporation (formerly registered as Comcast Holdings) is an American telecommunications conglomerate headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is the second-largest broadcasting and cable television company in the world by revenue (behind AT&T), the largest pay-TV company, the largest cable TV company and largest home Internet service provider in the United States, and the nation’s third-largest home telephone service provider. Comcast provides services to U.S. residential and commercial customers in 40 states and in the District of Columbia. As the parent company of the international media company NBCUniversal since 2011, Comcast is a producer of feature films and television programs intended for theatrical exhibition and over-the-air and cable television broadcast, respectively.
Comcast owns and operates the Xfinity residential cable communications subsidiary, Comcast Business, a commercial services provider, Xfinity Mobile, an MVNO of Verizon, over-the-air national broadcast network channels (NBC, Telemundo, TeleXitos, and Cozi TV), multiple cable-only channels (including MSNBC, CNBC, USA Network, Syfy, NBCSN, Oxygen, Bravo, and E!, among others), the film studio Universal Pictures, the VOD streaming service Peacock, animation studios (DreamWorks Animation, Illumination, Universal Animation Studios) and Universal Parks & Resorts. It also has significant holdings in digital distribution, such as thePlatform, which it acquired in 2006. Since October 2018, it is also the parent company of mass media pan-European company Sky Group, making it the biggest media company with more than 53 million subscribers in the U.S. and Europe.
Comcast has been criticized for multiple reasons; its customer satisfaction often ranks among the lowest in the cable industry. In addition, Comcast has violated net neutrality practices in the past, and, despite Comcast’s commitment to a narrow definition of net neutrality, critics advocate a definition which precludes any distinction between Comcast’s private network services and the rest of the Internet. Critics also point out a lack of competition in the vast majority of Comcast’s service area; there is limited competition among cable providers. Furthermore, given Comcast’s negotiating power as a large ISP, some suspect that Comcast could leverage paid peering agreements to unfairly influence end-user connection speeds. Its ownership of both content production (in NBCUniversal) and content distribution (as an ISP) has raised antitrust concerns. These issues, in addition to others, led to Comcast being dubbed “The Worst Company in America” by The Consumerist in 2010 and 2014.
