Comcast said that its fledgling consumer wireless service Xfinity mobile lost $191 million in the fourth quarter, up from a loss of $176 million in Q4 2017.
The full-year loss for the mobile service, which launched in early 2017, was $743 million. Coupled with a 2017 fiscal-year loss of $480 million, Xfinity Mobile has lost around $1.223 billion for Comcast in its first two years of operation.
Comcast also said that the service added 227,000 subscriber lines in the fourth quarter, bringing its total base to 1.2 million lines.
Like Charter Communications, with which it has closely aligned its mobile service with, Comcast bases the wireless product on an MVNO leasing agreement with Verizon.
Comcast’s Q4 earnings report came a day after equity research company published some notable findings about Xfinity Mobile.
For one, the service skews older than the incumbent wireless services, with an average subscriber age of 50.8 (see chart below).
For another, with the average Xfinity Mobile subscriber backed by a household income of $82,103, the service’s customers are poorer than those for wireless market leaders Verizon and AT&T, but richer than those of Sprint and T-Mobile.
Notably for Comcast, which sees Xfinity Mobile as an augment to it broader bundle of services, Xfinity Mobile customers say they pay, on average, $107 a month on their cable bills. That’s higher than any customers for any of the entrenched mobile services.
