IP Democracy: Verizon's Broadband is Still Booming, Thanks to FiOS

Verizon issued its Q3 06 earnings report this morning, with the incumbent telco posting pretty decent growth in net income — the same as its peers AT&T and BellSouth. Thanks to wireless and broadband growth, Verizon’s revenues ticked up during the quarter (increasing 3.6% year-over-year and 2.5% sequentially), while net income rose 2.8% year-over-year and 2.6% sequentially. Note that the data at the end of this posting reflects Verizon’s pro forma results, i.e. as if its acquisition of MCI had been in effect during 2005 and 2006. Verizon tends to place its actual results front-and-center. These actual results compare Verizon’s performance without MCI to Verizon’s performance with MCI, which to me is too confusing.

The most interesting news is that Verizon’s FiOS high-speed service is fueling continued, accelerating growth in the telco’s broadband subscriptions. While AT&T and BellSouth reported declining quarterly growth in their DSL offerings, Verizon added 448,000 net new broadband customers during the quarter, a run-rate 16% higher than the 330,000 net new broadband customers added during Q3 05, and 2% higher than the 440,000 net broadband additions posted in Q2 06.

Even as the growth in the mobile voice business continues to slow due to increased saturation (namely most people have cell phones), Verizon Wireless continues to post healthy gains. The wireless arm netted an additional 1.86 million new wireless voice customers during the quarter, down only slightly from Q3 05 levels and up slightly from Q2 06 levels.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on October 30, 2006 6:26 PM to IP Democracy