Cable operators are on a tear, with the Q1 06 earnings reports bearing witness to the power of the triple-play platform — cable operators are getting a lift across the board from their voice-video-data combos. Wall Street is starting to take notice and the conventional wisdom now (not three months ago, however) is that cable will grab a substantial chunk of the voice business before the phone companies even get their IPTV initiatives seriously off the ground.
And the new conventional wisdom is right…but one interesting overlooked fact is that the phone companies are offering video services today. It’s just that they’re not transmitting video over their own networks; they’re offering co-branded DBS services delivered by EchoStar and DirecTV.
No one seems to be paying attention to this telco video service, but during Q1 06, the phone companies posted healthy gains in their DBS-based subscribers.
| Incumbent Telco Video Subscribers via DBS Partnerships (000s) | |||||
| Total Subs. | Total Subs. | Total Subs. | Total Subs. | Total Subs. | |
| Telco | 1Q05 | 2Q05 | 3Q05 | 4Q05 | 1Q06 |
| AT&T | 394 | 404 | 419 | 457 | 491 |
| BellSouth | 314 | 394 | 460 | 523 | 628 |
| Qwest | 100 | 120 | 151 | 183 | 228 |
| Verizon* | 200 | 250 | 305 | 349 | 415 |
| Total | 1,008 | 1,168 | 1,335 | 1,512 | 1,762 |
| Net Change | NA | 161 | 166 | 178 | 249 |
| *1Q05 and 2Q05 are estimates. | |||||
At the end of Q1 06, the top four incumbent telcos laid claim to 1.762 million video customers through these marketing and sales alliances. Collectively the four telcos added around a quarter of a million net new video customers during Q1 06, a run-rate 40% higher than the 178,000 net new video customers added during Q4 05. The biggest gainer: BellSouth, which added 105,000 net new video customers through its pact with DirecTV.
(For more on the telcos’ Q1 06 video subscriber gains, see my pub IP Media Monitor — free registration required.)
Cynthia Brumfield at 1:19 PM|Comments(0)
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