Verizon reaches 35% FiOS TV penetration in Q3

Michelle Clancy | 18-10-2013

Verizon's third-quarter results turned up some good TV news: its FiOS business picked up a net 135,000 video subscribers – the second quarter in a row it has boosted its net additions from the year earlier. The IPTV provider now has 5.2 million subscribers and is the No 5 pay-TV distributor, after Comcast, DirecTV, DISH and Time Warner Cable.

Verizon also now has 35% penetration of its market, which passes 18.3 million premises. The telco stopped new build-outs of the fibre-to-the-home service, citing poor margins, and is focused on picking up additional subs in its footprint.

Verizon said that it benefited from the lengthy TWC-CBS retransmission spat in the late summer — it referred to it as "the dispute that happened" in the third quarter on the earnings call — picking up an undisclosed number of subs as TWC customers in New York found their CBS and Showtime content blacked out.

FiOS revenue (TV and broadband) rose 13.4% to $2.8 billion during the quarter, which drove consumer wireline revenue up 4.3% to $3.7 billion. Consumer ARPU was up 8.7% year-over-year.