Comcast 2014 Annual Report Download - page 12

Table of Contents
Sources of Supply
To offer our video services, we license a substantial portion of our programming from cable networks and broadcast networks, as
well as from local broadcast television stations. We attempt to secure long
-
term programming distribution agreements with our
content providers. We also license individual programs or packages of programs from programming suppliers for our On Demand
and streaming services. We seek to include in our distribution agreements the right to offer such programming to our subscribers
through multiple delivery platforms that may be used in a variety of locations, such as through On Demand, our XFINITY online
portal and our mobile apps.
Our video programming expenses are affected by the programming license fees charged by cable networks, the fees we pay for
retransmission of the signals from local broadcast television stations, the number of video customers we serve and the amount of
content we provide. We anticipate that our programming expenses will continue to increase as we provide additional content to our
customers; as we deliver this content through an increasing number of platforms, including On Demand, online and our mobile
apps; and as the fees we pay increase, primarily from retransmission consent fees and sports programming costs. We believe that
adding more content and delivering it on various platforms will help us attract and retain video customers.
We purchase from a limited number of suppliers a significant number of set-
top boxes and certain other customer premise
equipment, network equipment and services that we use to provide our cable services.
For our high-
speed Internet services, we license software products, such as email and security software, and content, such as
news feeds for our XFINITY online portal, from a variety of suppliers. Under our contracts with these suppliers, we generally pay on
a fixed-
fee basis, on a per subscriber basis in the case of software product licenses or on a video advertising revenue share basis
in the case of content licenses.
For our voice services, we license software products such as voicemail and text messaging from a variety of suppliers under
multiyear contracts. The fees we pay are generally based on the consumption of the related services.
We use two primary vendors to provide customer billing for our cable services.
Customer and Technical Services
Our customer service call centers provide 24/7 call-
answering capability, telemarketing and other services. Our technical services
group performs various tasks, including installations, plant maintenance and upgrades to our cable distribution system.
Sales and Marketing
We offer our services directly to residential and business customers through our customer service call centers, customer service
centers, door-to-
door selling, direct mail advertising, television advertising, Internet advertising, local media advertising,
telemarketing and retail outlets. We market our cable services both individually and as bundled services.
•
provide customers with the ability to subscribe to our cable services via the Internet, to perform
self-diagnostics and to resolve problems with our cable services
•
better serve our customers and our in
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home technicians
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Comcast 2014 Annual Report on Form 10
-
K