Comcast is closing in on 600,000 customer lines for its year-old Xfinity Mobile service, and the bulk of them are coming by way of Verizon Wireless and AT&T, according to a new study.
Among consumers who now use Xfinity Mobile as their primary mobile carrier, 27% are former Verizon Wireless customers and 20% came from AT&T, versus just 12% from Sprint, MarketStrategies International found in a study focused on what the firm calls the “Xfinity Mobile Effect.”
The study was based on an online survey of 1,044 adults conducted in March that included Xfinity Mobile customers, Comcast customers without Xfinity Mobile, and non-Comcast customers. Data was weighted to reflect current wireless carrier market share.
Xfinity Mobile leans on a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) deal with Verizon Wireless and tied into Comcast’s WiFi network. Comcast added 197,000 Xfinity Mobile customer lines in first-quarter 2018, ending the period with 577,000. Charter Communications plans to launch Spectrum Mobile, a service that also relies on a Verizon MVNO deal, by mid-2018.
As for drivers for those who did switch to Xfinity Mobile, 75% of the total called “overall plan costs” the largest, compared to “data costs” and “the use of WiFi hotspots to save on data usage and costs” (38% each), and 28% cited “free talk and text on up to five lines.”
Some 73% said they had yet to experience any issues with Xfinity Mobile, and 11% said they had experienced issues with customer service, versus slow data speeds (9%) or billing problems (6%).
Once exposed to Xfinity Mobile’s plans (unlimited and By the Gig), 6% said they would be “very likely” to switch in less than a year, compared to 21% who would be “somewhat likely” and 36% who would be on the fence (might or might not).
Comcast has said that more Xfinity Mobile customers are gravitating to the By the Gig plan. In the study, that group was split between plans, but found that the unlimited plan tended to better fit their needs. Xfinity Mobile is also seeing high early Net Promoter Scores, in terms of the likelihood that a subscriber would recommend it as the primary carrier. Xfinity Mobile netted a +59, ahead of T-Mobile (+34), Verizon (+24), AT&T (+19) and Sprint (-5).
