Instead of sticking with its tarnished old brand name, Comcast will relaunch its cable, Internet and voice services as Xfinity.
If you want to read enough marketing jargon to lose your lunch, check out Comcast's blog post on the topic. Here's a snippet:
"XFINITY represents the future of our company and it’s a promise to customers that we’ll keep innovating," Executive Vice President David Watson wrote. "When we launch XFINITY in a market, we’ll rebrand our products: XFINITY TV, XFINITY Voice and XFINITY Internet (our company, of course, remains Comcast)."
Comcast will re-brand itself in 11 markets next week: Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Chicago, Portland, Seattle, Hartford, Augusta, Chattanooga, parts of the Bay Area and San Francisco. Other markets will be given the Xfinity treatment next year.
The new name could be Comcast's attempt to wipe away image problems as it expands into Web video. Comcast is rolling out a service that lets cable subscribers watch a selection of shows online. Once dubbed "On Demand Online," the name was changed to Fancast Xfinity TV in December, foreshadowing today's announcement.
Tying the Comcast name to that service might not be wise -- do a Google search for "Comcast reputation" and you'll find plenty of unsavory results. There are also lots of unflattering anecdotes about Comcast service, such as the technician who fell asleep on a customer's couch, the one who punctured a gas line and blew up a customer's house or the contractor who murdered a customer. A couple anti-fan sites are out there as well.
I suspect there's another motive at work: With Comcast attempting to acquire NBC Universal, the company's probably looking to distinguish its content delivery from its content creation. Giving cable, Internet and voice a new name, and bringing it under the same umbrella as NBC accomplishes that goal. I'm not sure the Federal Communications Commission is going to sway at all as a result, but it could create a distinction for consumers.
In any case, the new name stinks.
