Comcast To Widen Low-Income Broadband Program, Double Speeds
'Internet Essentials' Has Connected 41,000 Low-Income Families
By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 1/31/2012 4:48:51 PM
After connecting 41,000 low-income households under its $9.95-per-month Internet Essentials broadband service, Comcast will expand eligibility requirements for the program, as well as double connection speeds and step up digital literacy efforts.
Comcast executive vice president David Cohen, on a conference call with reporters Tuesday, pronounced Internet Essentials a success to date -- even though the operator had no defined goals or expectations for how widely or quickly it would be adopted.
"I said, if we reach no one except the people we talked to... I was going to declare victory," Cohen said. "I know we are making a difference in these people's lives."
The goal for 2012, he added, "is to do better."
Cohen, at Comcast's Internet Essentials launch last fall in Washington, D.C., said he hoped there will be "thousands or tens of thousands of additional Internet customers who, but for this program, would not have signed up."
From August to December 2011, Comcast connected 41,000 households under Internet Essentials, or about 2% of the 2 million eligible under the program, representing an estimated 80,000 children and 160,000 Americans. In the initial phase, service was available to low-income families with children who are eligible to receive a free school lunch as part of their enrollment in the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture's National School Lunch Program.
Over the same period, Comcast distributed more than 5,500 computers at less than $150 each, a figure Cohen acknowledged was lower than the MSO expected.
Comcast agreed to offer low-cost broadband to poor families under the FCC's conditions on the company's merger with NBCUniversal. However, Cohen said, planning for the initiative predated the NBCU deal by two years, and Comcast offered to implement Internet Essentials voluntarily.
"It is something we would have done with or without [the NBCU] transaction," he said.
Now, to spur adoption rates, by the second quarter Comcast will double speeds -- to up to 3 Megabits per second downstream and 768 Kilobits per second upstream -- and will expand eligibility to include families who qualify for reduced-price school lunches as well, which make it available to nearly 300,000 additional households in Comcast's service area.
Comcast also plans to let community-based organization partners purchase Internet Essentials in bulk to help reach more eligible households with a streamlined and more customer-friendly process, and will provide an instant approval process for all students who attend schools with the highest percentage of NSLP participation.
In addition, Comcast plans to expand its online and in-person digital literacy training efforts, in part by working with the Connect to Compete broadband-adoption initiative led by the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.
"This is a broadband-resistant population... We knew we were going to have to be at this for a while," Cohen said. "The biggest impediment, by a mile and a half, is digital literacy: This population does not understand the value and importance of broadband. It's not their fault, it's our fault."
About 80% of families that signed up for Internet Essentials said they have a working computer, which led to low take rates on the subsidized $150 PC offer, Cohen said. Comcast intends to work with the Connect to Compete initiative to try to reduce computer costs further, because "there's an instinct on our part that [the $150 price point] has to be an impediment."
Under the Internet Essentials program, any former Comcast customers must not have unpaid bills. Asked if eliminating this disqualifying factor would have an effect on adoption, Cohen said "research indicates that is a very small contributor." He said 4% of calls are from people who have past-due Comcast invoices.
"We are in this to sign people up," Cohen said. "If somebody owes us money we'll find a way to clear that."
The majority of Internet Essentials users surveyed are happy with the service, Cohen said. About 86% said they are highly satisfied with the product, and 99% said they would recommend Internet Essentials to others.
To date Comcast has provided about 300 in-person digital literacy training sessions with more than 1,250 individual attendees. Cohen wants to increase those efforts: "I'm excited that 1,250 people showed up for digital literacy training, but it's not enough."
Since its August 2011 launch, Comcast has publicized the program across more than 4,000 school districts and 30,000-plus schools. The MSO has worked with more than 2,000 elected officials and more than 1,000 community-based organizations, including churches, libraries, and PTAs, to promote Internet Essentials.
Cohen also touted the media campaign for Internet Essentials, which included 7,000 public service announcements, most of which ran in the last three months of 2011. Unpaid media coverage included 1,400 print and online stories, nearly 600 TV segments and about 100 radio interviews -- for a total of 750 million media impressions, which is seven times the size of a typical Comcast product launch, according to Cohen.
A copy of Comcast's 52-page January 2012 progress report on Internet Essentials is available here: http://blog.comcast.com/assets/InternetEssentialsfromComcast.pdf.
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