Telecom Lead America: The latest quarterly financial
results from Verizon show continued growth in the company’s Pay TV and
Broadband businesses, and the outlook for the upcoming quarters of 2012 is
promising, according to the latest forecast from Strategy Analytics.
Verizon reports 4.6% growth in Q1 2012 revenue at $28.24
billion
Verizon Wireless reported 4.6 percent growth in Q1 2012
revenue at $28.24 billion as compared with $26.99 billion in Q1 2011.Wireless
service revenues increased by 7.7 percent during the period.
Strategy Analytics said that Verizon’s subscriber numbers
has increased during the quarter and its Average Revenue per User (ARPU) has
grown as well, following the trend of customers shifting from DSL to FiOS Fiber
service, as well as upgrading to faster Broadband speeds.
“FiOS Broadband broke the 5 million subscriber
plateau one quarter ahead of our initial forecast. More than half of FiOS
customers are taking Broadband packages with speeds higher than the basic
package, as well as bundling into triple play packages. This will lead to
increasing blended ARPU for Verizon,” said Richard Fontes, analyst in the
Service Provider Strategies group.
Strategy Analytics expects FiOS Broadband subscribers to top 5.6 million by the
end of 2012. The company also owns 5 percent market share in the total digital
Pay TV market in the U.S. Growth in this business will result in nearly 5
million subscribers by the end of the year.
“Verizon has done an exceptional job of increasing
its penetration in homes passed reaching 32.3 percent in the first quarter.
Over the coming months, the company is going to shift from an expansion
strategy to work even harder on converting customers in its existing footprint
to FiOS Broadband and TV services,” said Jason Blackwell, director,
service provider strategies (SPS) at Strategy Analytics.
Verizon’s capital expenditures touched $3.6
billion in Q1 2012, a decrease of $798 million compared with
first-quarter 2011.
Global enterprise revenues totaled $3.9
billion in the quarter, up 0.9 percent compared with first-quarter 2011.
