Comcast Corporation (formerly registered as Comcast Holdings) is an American telecommunications conglomerate headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is the second-largest broadcasting and cable television company in the world by revenue and the largest pay-TV company, the largest cable TV company and largest home Internet service provider in the United States, and the nation's third-largest home telephone service provider. Comcast services U.S. residential and commercial customers in 40 states and in the District of Columbia. As the owner of the international media company NBCUniversal since 2011, Comcast is a producer of feature films and television programs intended for theatrical exhibition and over-the-air and cable television broadcast, respectively.
Comcast owns and operates the Xfinity cable communications subsidiary, over-the-air national broadcast network channels (NBC and Telemundo), multiple cable-only channels (including MSNBC, CNBC, USA Network, NBCSN, and E!, among others), the film studio Universal Pictures, and Universal Parks & Resorts. It also has significant holdings in digital distribution, such as thePlatform, which it acquired in 2006. In February 2014, the company agreed to merge with Time Warner Cable in an equity swap deal worth $45.2 billion, under the terms of the agreement, Comcast was to acquire 100% of Time Warner Cable. However, on April 24, 2015, Comcast terminated the agreement. Comcast and Charter Communications entered into an agreement to conduct exclusive discussions with Sprint Corporation in late June 2017. Since October 2018, it is also the parent company of mass media pan-European company Sky, making it the biggest and leading media company with more than 53 million subscribers over five countries across Europe. Comcast has been criticized for multiple reasons; its customer satisfaction often ranks among the lowest in the cable industry. In addition, Comcast has violated net neutrality practices in the past; and, despite Comcast's commitment to a narrow definition of net neutrality, critics advocate a definition which precludes any distinction between Comcast's private network services and the rest of the Internet. Critics also point out a lack of competition in the vast majority of Comcast's service area; there is limited competition among cable providers. Furthermore, given Comcast's negotiating power as a large ISP, some suspect that Comcast could leverage paid peering agreements to unfairly influence end-user connection speeds. And its ownership of both content production (in NBCUniversal) and content distribution (as an ISP) has raised antitrust concerns. These issues, in addition to others, led to Comcast being dubbed "The Worst Company in America" by The Consumerist in 2010 and 2014.