Comcast To Hike Fees Again, Starting Mid-December

Comcast has confirmed it will be hiking its fees again, starting Dec. 18.

Comcast released a statement on the planned nationwide hikes — blaming broadcasters’ rising retransmission fees — after Cord Cutters News called out the move on Sunday in a post. The post included a link to a Comcast PDF showing new rates for some subscribers in Georgia.

“Rising programming costs — most notably for broadcast TV and sports — continue to be the biggest factors driving price increases for all content distributors and their customers,” Comcast stated.  “While we absorb some of the increased programming costs, they have a significant impact on the cost of our services.”

Comcast’s Broadcast TV fee will jump by nearly 50%, from $10 to $14.95 per month. That will bring the increases on this fee —which is “unavoidable on Comcast’s TV service, but routinely left out of advertising,” to 460% in just under five years, points out FierceVideo.

The rate for Comcast’s Basic TV package, which enables receiving local network, public, educational and government channels, and basic DVR service, will increase by $5, to $35 per month.

Internet service will rise by $3 per month for most plans (although not for Gigabit Pro, which costs $299.95 per month.)

In addition, modem and voice equipment rental fees will rise by $1, to $14. Customers are allowed to buy their own modems if they prefer.

Even the returned payment fee is going up by $10 per month, to $30.

In all, this means that cable subscribers’ monthly bills will increase by as much as $13.99 per month, bringing a TV-plus-internet package to nearly $168 per year, points out Cord Cutters News.

Comcast lost 238,000 net subscribers in the third quarter, leaving it with 21.4 million video customers. That was the second-largest number of losses among the major players, although far less than AT&T, which dropped a 1.37 million subscribers across its DirecTV, AT&T U-verse and AT&T Now pay-TV services.

But like AT&T, Comcast is pushing lucrative broadband services, with some success. Comcast gained 379,000 broadband subscribers in Q3, to bring its total to 28.2 million.

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