Verizon reported a mixed bag of earnings this morning: company’s wireless and broadband business are doing just fine, in fact better than most expected. The wireline business is well, becoming a bit of drag.
Verizon Wireless added 1.9 million net customers in the third quarter 2006, up 15.1% from the third quarter 2005, and now the company has a total of 56.7 million customers of which 54.6 million retail (non-wholesale) customers. The revenues for the wireless business were up 18.2% from third quarter 2005.
Broadband is where the company showed better than expected results. Analysts expected Verizon to add about 130,000 FiOS customers, the company added about 147,000 in the third quarter. Some analysts expected 55,000 video customers, VZ added 63,000.
The total broadband net additions however were softwareer than what analysts had expected: 448,000 versus 500,000+ forecast. Another proof that the DSL market is seriously slowing down. All these gains were not enough to offset the problems in traditional voice and other businesses. Wireline revenues were down 4.7% for the quarter.
HOW long before Verizon just buys Qwest????????
Skibare
14 million lines in 14 states is Qwest-ionable
Philosophy majors endlessly speculate on trees falling when nobody is around but will anyone so transcendentally predisposed to telco concepts (i.e. net neutrality) care when a Verizon DSL customer makes the jump to fiber? With wireless and FiOS exceeding quarterly expectations and Verizon stock paying out a tidy 4.5% dividend I should think our collective prospects for a fiber loop(or in the least some marketable competition from the cable guys)in the neighborhood just got better.
Well, of course Verizon’s DSL adds are going to slow down. FiOS has to be cannibalizing some of their DSL lines; I can’t imagine too many people choosing DSL over FiOS if they have an option of both.
But, yeah, the overall numbers for Verizon versus the telco guys without fiber seem to be backing Verizon’s strategy. Cheap DSL seems to have hit a bit of a wall in converting dialup customers over. (Despite there being a HUGE pool of dialup users left in the USA.) It seems like more speed is necessary in order to get subscriptions right now, rather than the “barely broadband for dialup prices” DSL plans that were so successful in netting customers the last few years.
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