The earnings reports are in and the triple-play tally is leaning in cable’s favor. According to my analysis (more details at IP Media Monitor - free registration), cable operators ended the quarter with more than six million telephony customers, adding 677,000 net new customers during the quarter.
| Cable Telephony Subscriber Counts (000) | |||||
| 2Q05 | 3Q05 | 4Q05 | 1Q06 | 2Q06 | |
| Comcast* | 1,228 | 1,230 | 1,242 | 1,321 | 1,463 |
| Cox** | 1,506 | 1,607 | 1,697 | 1,807 | 1,892 |
| Cablevision*** | 487 | 609 | 739 | 873 | 994 |
| Charter | 68 | 90 | 122 | 191 | 258 |
| Insight | 74 | 81 | 90 | 100 | 107 |
| Mediacom | na | 2 | 22 | 46 | 66 |
| Time Warner | 614 | 854 | 1,100 | 1,370 | 1,604 |
| Total | 3,976 | 4,474 | 5,012 | 5,708 | 6,384 |
| Quarterly Adds. | (3,467) | 498 | 538 | 696 | 677 |
| Total Telephony Homes Passed by Group | 44,641 | 50,766 | 59,321 | 69,727 | 78,030 |
| Subs. % of Telephony Homes Passed | 8.9% | 8.8% | 8.4% | 8.2% | 8.2% |
| *At end of Q2 06, Comcast passed 25.6 million homes with VoIP service and counted 721,000 VoIP or digital voice customers. The remaining homes passed and subscribers reflected legacy circuit-switched. | |||||
| **EMDI estimates. Note Cox offers a mixed of circuit-switched and VoIP service. | |||||
| ***Includes sequentially decreasing, and increasingly trivial, amounts of legacy circuit-switched customers. | |||||
| Source: Company reports and Emerging Media Analysis estimates. © 2006. | |||||
Incumbent telcos, on the other hand, counted just about two million video subscribers at the end of the quarter. Granted, these are all video customers that flowed from the companies’ DBS alliances, and the real video competition via fiber-based networks has yet to begin. Still, cable has swiped about three times as much of the telcos’ core customer base as the phone companies have stolen from the cable operator’s traditional video customer count.
| Incumbent Telco Video Subscribers via DBS Partnerships (000s) | |||||
| Telco | 2Q05 | 3Q05 | 4Q05 | 1Q06 | 2Q06 |
| AT&T | 404 | 419 | 457 | 491 | 533 |
| BellSouth | 394 | 460 | 523 | 628 | 691 |
| Qwest | 120 | 151 | 183 | 228 | 273 |
| Verizon* | 250 | 305 | 349 | 415 | 485 |
| Total | 1,168 | 1,335 | 1,512 | 1,762 | 1,982 |
| Net Change | 161 | 166 | 178 | 249 | 220 |
| *Q2 05 is an estimate. | |||||
| Source: Company reports and Emerging Media Analysis estimates. © 2006. | |||||
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 2:30 PM | Print | Comments (0)
News Corp.’s has made a year-long splash with its acquisition of Intermix, parent of hot social networking site MySpace. But, a less-hyped purchase by the media conglomerate, its September 2005,$650 million buy of online gaming company IGN, is in the news today — 20th Century Fox, another arm of the company, will start selling movies and TV shows using an IGN site, Direct2Drive.
Video gaming and movies share a lot of common attributes and it makes a lot of sense for Fox to exploit its gaming technology for video distribution. It also makes a lot of sense for Fox to build out its own destiny in online film and TV sales rather than rely solely on third party outlets such as Movielink and CinemaNow.
Movies, such as “X-Men: The Last Stand,” and TV shows, such as “24,” will be available for viewing on PCs and mobile devices (but only units that use Microsoft’s copy protection). Movies will be priced at $20/download, while TV shows will be downloadable at $1.99/pop.
MySpace is still grabbing its share of the glory in this move — Fox Interactive Media plans to make the films and shows available on MySpace soon.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:21 AM | Print | Comments (2)
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