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Comment by missedthecue | Hacker News Reader

Comcast has 189,000 employees who make US salaries. It costs a lot less to dig a trench in Romania than in Seattle.

You can look at the profit margins. 11.3% for Comcast as of June 2022. That tells me they aren't simply collecting the difference between US and Romanian internet prices in profit.

Of course, far be it from me to defend Comcast, but this is basically just the concept of purchasing power parity (PPP)

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Costs of deployment and profit margins have nothing to do with it. The US public has subsidized the cost of broadband internet deployment since the very birth of the internet, and continues to do so like clockwork every few years. Private ISPs continue to caress the books to make it seem like they're barely operating at a profit and still need more, without ever having delivered on the last promise. Taxpayers have paid for fiber to every home a few times over at this point.

http://irregulators.org/bookofbrokenpromises/

The thing I can't really understand if this is the argument is where the money is actually going? With an on paper 11% profit margin it's certainly isn't shareholders, and even if the executives rake it would still be a blip in their total revenue.

It is precisely shareholders and executives. 11% profit margin but huge share buybacks, bonuses and acquisitions.

Share buybacks and acquisitions come from post profit money, not pre profit, so they won't impact the margin. They're not a line item in operating expenses.

Bonuses and other remuneration will, but no executives are getting $5 billion annual bonuses there and ~$million bonuses won't move the needle.

I'm gonna bet the Romanian ISP has fewer employees per subscriber and fewer employees per mile of fiber.

Businesses without competition get fat.

Are those margins only on their broadband business? Comcast has other ventures as well.

Good question. I briefly looked into it and it seems they do break out the numbers for cable communications division (as well as media and entertainment) but I couldn't find a profit margin figure without opening the whole 10K and my calculator. Worth noting that the great majority of their business is cable communications.

However, Charter Communications is a competitor that is more of a pure play and their margin is 10.8%

Internet in Seattle is cheap, so that’s not a good example.

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