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Comcast is spinning off NBCUniversal to become a pure connectivity company. Here is what that means for your next renewal, and the move to make before your term ends.
Two weeks ago a client - a regional company running seven locations across Ohio and Indiana - sat down with us to walk through their Comcast Business renewal. Nothing was broken. The circuits were solid, the phones worked, and the account had been quiet for years. That was the problem.
When we laid the three-year history next to today's market, the bill had crept up close to 18 percent while the going rate for the same bandwidth had actually dropped. Nobody had done anything wrong. The service worked, the invoice arrived, autopay paid it, and the price drifted in the one direction prices drift when no one is watching.
On June 29, Comcast announced it will spin off NBCUniversal and Sky - its movie, TV, and streaming business - into a separate, independent public company. The separation is expected to take about a year. When it's done, what's left of Comcast is the network: Xfinity on the consumer side, Comcast Business on ours. It becomes a pure connectivity and technology company. This follows Comcast already carving off its cable-TV networks into a separate business earlier this year.
The translation for a business owner: the company that carries your internet and phone lines is about to have nothing else to sell. Connectivity isn't one division among many anymore, it's the entire company. When growth is judged on broadband and business-services numbers alone, every renewal on the books starts to matter more.
When the network is the whole business, two things tend to happen. First, the company gets hungrier for new accounts - expect sharper introductory pricing and more aggressive promos to win market share. If you're actively shopping, that's good news.
Second, and this is the part that costs businesses money: the renewal is where a connectivity company makes its margin back. Introductory pricing rolls off. The loyalty rate quietly lands higher than the new-customer rate. A carrier under pressure to grow revenue leans hardest on accounts that aren't paying attention. Comcast isn't alone in this shift - AT&T is decommissioning copper, Verizon was recently dropped from the Dow, and the industry is reorganizing around who owns the pipe. When your vendor is rethinking its whole business, that's your cue to rethink your side of the deal.
One location, one bill - that's easy to track. Seven locations means seven contracts, seven renewal dates, and seven chances for the price to creep. Different sites get signed at different times on different terms. Some roll onto month-to-month at a premium. Some auto-renew before anyone opens the notice.
We have never once reviewed a multi-site account and found every location sitting on its best available rate. Not once. The consolidation happening in the carrier world is really just an argument for consolidating your own view of what you're paying, site by site.
The Comcast split isn't a reason to panic, and it isn't a reason to rip everything out and switch. It's a reminder that the company on the other side of your contract is reorganizing its entire business around the exact service you buy, and reorganizations arrive with a new pricing strategy attached.
Being vendor-neutral means we don't care whether you stay with Comcast, move to fiber from someone else, or renegotiate and stay put. What matters is that you're paying a fair, current rate on terms that don't quietly drift between renewals. Plenty of times the right answer is to stay right where you are, at a better number.
Every few years the telecom industry rearranges itself, and the pattern holds: businesses that pay attention save real money, and the ones on autopay quietly fund the reorganization. Pull your contracts. Check your dates. Know your number before the renewal notice knows it for you.
We'll pull your contracts across every location and tell you if you're already on a good deal - no advisory fee, no obligation.