Verizon Communications said it agreed to acquire Frontier Communications in an all-cash deal valued at $20 billion.

Frontier is a pure-play fiber internet provider. It has spent $4.1 billion over the past four years to upgrade and expand its fiber network. 

The acquisition expands Verizon’s fiber footprint by adding Frontier’s 2.2 million fiber subscribers in 25 states to Verizon’s 7.4 million Fios connections in nine states and Washington, D.C. 

“Connectivity is essential in nearly every part of our lives and work, and no one delivers better than Verizon,” Verizon chairman and CEO Hans Vestberg said. 

“Verizon offers more choice, flexibility and value, and we continuously look for ways to provide the best product and network experience to our customers as we bolster our position as the provider of choice.” Vestberg said. “The acquisition of Frontier is a strategic fit. It will build on Verizon’s two decades of leadership at the forefront of fiber and is an opportunity to become more competitive in more markets throughout the United States, enhancing our ability to deliver premium offerings to millions more customers across a combined fiber network.”

Verizon will pay $38.50 per share in cash for each Frontier share. Frontier shares rose 38% to close at $38.68 on Wednesday, when media reports about the deal started to circulate.

The Verizon and Frontier boards unanimously approved the transaction, which is expected to close in about 18 months.

“Less than four years ago, we set out an ambitious plan to Build Gigabit America, the digital infrastructure this country needs to thrive for generations to come,” Frontier president and CEO Nick Jeffery said. “Today’s announcement is recognition of our progress building a best-in-class fiber network and delivering reliable, high-speed broadband to millions of customers across the country. It’s also a vote of confidence for the future of fiber. I am confident that this delivers a significant and certain cash premium to Frontier’s shareholders, while creating exciting new opportunities for our employees and expanding access to reliable connectivity for more Americans.” 

Going deep into its playbook, Verizon Communications is offering NFL Sunday Ticket to new subscribers and customers who upgrade their home internet plans or add an additional line or new device to their mobile account. 

Sunday Ticket, sold by YouTube, costs $449 a year and enables fans to watch out-of-market NFL games.

Some existing subscribers will get $100 off a season of Sunday Ticket.

Verizon is also working with YouTube to offer $10 a month off subscriptions to the YouTube TV Base plan, which cuts the monthly price to $62.99 a month from $72.99 a month.

As part of the promotion, Verizon is also offering customers an opportunity to win tickets to games from Verizon Access. Verizon said tickets to every NFL game for all 32 teams will be given away.

“Whether you watch the game on NFL Sunday Ticket, YouTube TV, or score tickets from Verizon Access, Verizon is making it easier than ever for football fans to stay connected to the game and teams they love,” a Verizon spokesperson said. “Plus, Verizon now powers all 30 NFL Stadiums with 5G Ultra Wideband technology, delivering the best experience and connectivity.“

Verizon Communications’ 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) home internet business showed slightly decelerated but still strong growth in the second quarter, adding 378,000 subscribers vs. 384,000 during the same April-June period of 2023. 

Verizon now has 3.812 million FWA customers and continues, along with T-Mobile, to disrupt the home internet business, seizing gobs of market share from cable operators, virtually all of which have stopped growing their broadband customer ranks. 

But while FWA has proven disruptive, it's long-term revenue potential for Verizon and T-Mobile is still in question.

Average revenue per customer for Verizon home internet actually was down year over year slightly — again — in Q2, to $47.31.

“The relatively weaker results in FWA are all the more surprising since FWA ARPU is still quite low,” analyst Craig Moffett pointed out. “Given the seasoning of the base, and roll-off of introductory discounts, one might have imagined meaningful growth. FWA APRU was up sequentially, albeit only modestly, and remains slightly lower than a year ago.”

Verizon is still offering FWA service starting at $35 a month. 

T-Mobile reports earnings on July 31. 

The most aggressive bundler in the bundling business is at it again. 

Verizon is offering subscribers to its wireless and home internet products a year free of Netflix Premium, which retails for $22.99 a month, if they also sign up and pay for a year of Peacock Premium ($7.99 a month).

Peacock Premium offers subscribers the ability to have four streams going at once (vs. just two for Netflix’s most-popular $15.49-a-month “Standard” plan). It delivers select content in 4K, which is unavailable in other Netflix tiers. And it doesn’t require users to watch commercials. 

A year free of Premium breaks down to $275.88. 

Verizon has been the most aggressive user of bundled-service promotions in the consumer wireless business, having previously packaged the $6.99 Netflix Basic with Ads with the $9.99-a-month ad-supported Max for $10 a month. It also packaged Netflix Premium with Starz Play last year. 

Last month, Verizon extended the bundling opportunities available to “myPlan” customers on the unlimited wireless side to its Fios and fixed-wireless home internet customers, introducing the new “myHome” perks package.

Amid a wide-ranging brand refresh that includes, among numerous announcements, a new logo, Verizon said its extending its popular myPlan bundled entertainment services offering to home internet customers. 

The new "myHome" feature will allow customers of Fios-branded wireline internet, as well as Verizon 5G Internet fixed-wireless-access users -- 67 million subscribers in all -- the option of instantly adding (and cancelling) various bundled streaming perks. 

These not only include the ad-supported iteration of the Disney Bundle, a $19-a-month proposition that is priced at $10 a month for six months for myPlan and my Home customers, but also Verizon's packaging of Netflix Standard with ads and the ad-supported Max, a $17-a-month package that Verizon also sells for $10. 

Verizon myPlan and myHome customers also pay $10 a month for the $13-a-month Walmart Plus service, which includes Paramount Plus. 

YouTube Premium (normally $14 a month) is also available as a Verizon discounted $10-a-month service offering, and Apple One is coming later this summer. 

"By listening to our customers, we continue to significantly evolve our offerings and brand promise to connect people when it matters most on our reliable network,” said Verizon Chairman and CEO Hans Vestberg, in a statement. 

T-Mobile remains the wireless provider with the fastest median 5G internet download speed in the U.S., according to a new report published by Ookla. 

The research company's latest “5G in the U.S.” study found T-Mobile had a peak median download speed on its 5G network of 287.14 megabits per second (Mbps) before a slight drop-off in April and May. 

Verizon similarly peaked in March at 224.67 before dipping. 

As Ookla also notes, Verizon is gaining ground on T-Mobile, even surpassing in in median upload speed. 

Last week, the Advertising Research Federation released more new figures, suggesting that 6% of U.S. households watch video exclusively on mobile devices, a tally that increased by 1 million homes since 2022, the group said. 

Notabaly, according to Ookla, both T-Mobile and Verizon have improved their experience for video and gaming over 5G since last year. 

Ookla lead industry analyst Mark Giles noted: “5G performance in the United States continues to improve as more midband spectrum becomes available. In March, T-Mobile gained access to additional 2.5 GHz spectrum it won at auction 108 in 2022, and we’re already beginning to see the impact of this, adding extra capacity to its 5G network and boosting performance in rural U.S. locations in particular. In just one month, T-Mobile’s median download performance across the U.S. increased by 29.64 Mbps.”

The overall 5G experience does vary state to state, Ookla also said. 

Verizon’s previously explosive deployment growth of inexpensive fixed wireless access home internet service is decelerating. 

The wireless company reported the addition of 354,000 FWA customers across business and residential channels in the first quarter, down 10% from the 393,000 it tallied in the first quarter of 2023. 

The business side of the equation added a record 115,000 customers during the first three months of the year, but residential growth dropped nearly 21% year over year to 203,000 new Verizon fixed wireless access consumers. 

Verizon, which first began deploying its cellular-based 5G Home internet service back in 2018, now touts 3.48 million FWA customers. (Here's Verizon's Q1 earnings release.)

“Their results in fixed wireless access remain a puzzle,” equity analyst Craig Moffett noted in a Monday morning note to investors. "Growth is still relatively strong, but their quarterly results continue to decelerate, something we wouldn’t have expected given the early stage of deployment and the steady expansion of their Band 76 C-Band footprint. Their results have never approached those of T-Mobile, particularly in the Consumer segment."

T-Mobile, which touted 4.776 million FWA customers as of the end of 2023 and was still witnessing accelerated fixed-wireless customer growth as of the fourth quarter, reports its Q1 data on Thursday. 

For its part, Verizon reported a narrow 0.2% year-over-year expansion in first-quarter operating revenue to $33 billion. 

In the wireline segment of its home internet business, it added 49,000 residential Fios Internet subscribers in the first quarter, down from 63,000 in Q1 2023. Verizon now has 7.02 million residential Fios Internet customers. 

Meanwhile, Verizon's residential Fios TV business dropped below the 3 million customer line, losing 68,000 customers in Q1 (vs. a loss of 74,000 customers a year ago). Verizon now has 2.88 million residential linear pay TV customers left. 

Verizon Communications said Tuesday that it added 375,000 fixed wireless access customers in the fourth quarter.

With the additions — which narrowly missed Wall Street analysts’ consensus hopes — Verizon more than doubled its FWA base in 2023, reaching 3.06 million customers. (Verizon's Q4 earnings release is available here.)

Of its FWA additions in Q4, 231,000 of them were for the consumer market. Adding 53,000 Fios Internet net additions and subtracting 15,000 legacy DSL subscribers, Verizon added 269,000 home broadband customers in Q4. 

The company ended the year with just over 9 million home broadband users, a nearly 15% expansion vs. 2022. 

In other parts of Verizon’s business, the company lost 64,000 Fios linear pay TV users, bringing its base to a hair above 3 million customers.

In the company’s core business, consumer wireless, net post-paid additions were better than expected at 449,000. That was Verizon’s best subscriber performance in more than a year. 

However, none of the aforementioned subscriber expansion has translated into revenue growth for the company.

Verizon reported virtually flat operating revenue of $35.1 billion (up 0.3%) in Q4. Full-year revenue of $134 billion was down 2.1%.

"For any subscription-based business, the conversation has to begin with subscriptions," noted equity analyst Craig Moffett in a letter to shareholders Tuesday morning. "So, Verizon’s improvement on that score is unquestionably good news. Unfortunately, the picture gets a bit murkier after that. Their post-paid ARPU isn’t growing (at least, not yet). Wireline continues to shrink. Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) isn’t showing the kind of lift-off one might have expected."

Verizon, long a notorious user of aggressive subscription streaming promotions to gain an edge in the ultra-competitive U.S. wireless business, is now bundling up. 

The company is offering its unlimited wireless customers the ad-supported versions of Netflix and Max for $10 a month, a $7-a-month (40%) discount on the regular price of the combined services. 

The promotion is available via Verizon’s myPlan a la carte subscription program starting Dec. 7 to “Unlimited Welcome, Unlimited Plus or Unlimited Ultimate” customers. (Here’s Verizon's press release.)

Also read: Verizon Appears to Have Rebranded Its ‘Stream TV’ Android TV-Based Gadget as Fios TV+, Made It the Default Set-Top For New Fios Video Customers

 “Customers want unbeatable offers from top partners that deliver the best services and experiences they want, and on the nation’s most reliable network. With these only for Verizon deals and first-of-its-kind bundled content offers you can get through myPlan, there’s never been a better time to be a Verizon customer,” Frank Boulben, chief revenue officer for Verizon Consumer Group, said in a statement.

Also read: The Bundle Is Back! Register for Our Exclusive Next TV Fireside Chat With MyBundle's Jason Cohen

Verizon notes that with its $10 price or the Disney Bundle (Disney Plus, Hulu and ESPN Plus), myPlan customers can obtain five top SVODs for $20 a month. 

Existing Netflix and Max users can take advantage of the promotion, but they're strongly encouraged to use the respective service's account management tools to avoid getting double-billed. 

Verizon is still delivering 12 free months of Netflix Premium to wireless, 5G Home and LTE Home customers who sign up for Starz Play via its wholesale subscription market, +play. That promotion was initiated back in July. 

Cable wireless providers have one of the biggest “arbitrage” opportunities in the history of the telecommunications business, one that might lead them to “ultimately dominate the U.S. wireless market,” equity analyst Craig Moffett wrote in a Wednesday-morning note to investors. 

In making his case — that their respective MVNO deals with Verizon Communications work decisively in favor of Comcast and Charter Communications — Moffett jumps all the way back to 1775 and Benjamin Franklin’s job as the first U.S. Postmaster General. This tenure led to flat-rate billing on mail delivery, regardless of whether letters and packages were sent to easy-to-reach urban places or far-more-expensive-to-get-to rural destinations. 

This pricing ethos based on “mean average cost” as opposed to “local cost to serve” billing foundations eventually found its way into the U.S. telecom business, where it was exploited as an arbitrage opportunity in the late 1990s by competitive local-exchange carriers (CLECs).

Now, with Comcast recently declaring that 60% of Xfinity Mobile traffic comes from just 3% of its footprint, Moffett said that cable operators have a wonderful opportunity to offload cheap-to-serve urban wireless traffic onto their own networks, while keeping more expensive-to-serve traffic on Verizon’s network via their mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) agreements. 

“They’ll leave the high-cost areas to Verizon,” said Moffett, principal and senior analyst at MoffettNathanson. 

“That wouldn't be a problem” for incumbent wireless companies like Verizon if the underlying wholesale pricing of the MVNO "reflected local cost to serve,” Moffett said. “It’s a VERY big problem when underlying wholesale prices are based on mean average cost.

“No one else has ever had an arbitrage opportunity in wireless even remotely on this scale,” Moffett added. “Cable is currently charging as much as 30% less than AT&T and Verizon for wireless service, and they are already earning gross margins as high as 70%.”

With Comcast currently deploying Samsung strand-mounted small cells in order to drive down MVNO costs further, Moffett said, “It is not inconceivable that they and Charter will eventually be able to offload more than 60% of their wireless traffic onto their own networks with only minimal incremental investment, boosting their already-high margins to as much as 85%.”

Comcast added 294,000 Xfinity Mobile lines in the third quarter to reach a total of 6.28 million, while Charter tacked on 594,000 Spectrum Mobile lines to reach 7.2 million lines as of the end of September. For its part, Verizon beat analysts’ expectations by adding 100,000 post-paid phone customers in Q3. 

“The investment community still doesn’t take cable wireless seriously,” Moffett wrote. “Because they still think of cable wireless as ‘just’ an MVNO. It is not. Cable is arbitraging a pricing structure — same price everywhere, whether rural or urban — more than one hundred years in the making.” 

The panel “If Content is King, Distribution is King Kong” went down at the Paley Center for Media’s Paley Museum in New York during the Paley International Council Summit. Sowmyanarayan Sampath, CEO, Verizon Consumer Group, and Matt Strauss, chairman, direct-to-consumer and international, NBCUniversal, spoke about attracting users to their services, and the best ways to keep them on board for the long haul. 

Stephanie Ruhle, host of The 11th Hour on MSNBC and senior business analyst, NBC News, was the moderator. Ruhle asked the panelists about combating customer churn. Sampath boasted about the low churn rate at Verizon Consumer Group and mentioned how the major streamers seek to work with Verizon to lower customer departure rates. 

Churn happens when things get complex for the user, Sampath said, such as an expiring credit card that nixes a subscription. “Churn management and retention is an art,” he said. “That’s what we are good at.”

He hinted at Verizon’s ability to “subtly nudge” users who might need a prompt to stay subscribed. 

Strauss mentioned the “infinite choice” of programming that consumers have, describing it as both a blessing and a curse. He said it’s on the networks in terms of “how easy it is to sign up and how easy it is to search and find all the choices that are available.”

Better partnering between networks and distributors and tech platforms, Strauss added, will lower churn rates. 

Ruhle also asked about the best way to get subscribers on board in the first place. Strauss spoke a bit about the launch of Peacock, at a point when the industry’s focus was on ad-free interfaces and binge viewing, he said. “It’s really not how most people watch television,” he countered. “Sometimes you don’t know what you want to watch.”

Peacock sought to “go beyond movies and TV [series],” he said. Borrowing a page from the broadcast playbook, sports and live news give the network a burst of urgency. “It’s what makes TV great, that it’s got a pulse,” he said.

Strauss also talked up Peacock’s $6 monthly price point. The mindset at launch was not to get all of users’ average five hours a day of TV viewing or all of their monthly TV spend, he said, but to get a significant piece of both. 

Strauss said the streaming wars are not winner-take-all: “There will be multiple streaming services.”

The Paley International Council Summit happens November 7-8 in New York. It bears the title “Breaking Boundaries: How New Ideas Are Reshaping Media.” Speakers include Eddy Cue, senior VP of services at Apple; David Kenny, executive chairman, Nielsen; and John Malone, chairman of Liberty Global. 

The panelists broke down whether streaming is starting to resemble cable in terms of bundling networks. “There’s likely going to be some reaggregation,” said Sampath. 

“I call it back to the future,” Strauss added. “If you’ve been in this industry long enough you do tend to repeat things.”

Ruhle brought up the frustration of never seeming to know which streamer a movie or series may be on. The panelists said it’s on the networks to improve the user experience. Sampath mentioned a massive Verizon investment in 5G. 

Strauss said, “I think we’ll look back in a few years, and realize how pedestrian streaming interfaces are.”

Proliferation of low-priced fixed wireless access home internet isn't slowing down. In fact, it's speeding up a little.

Verizon reported the addition of 384,000 FWA customers in the third quarter, precisely flat with the telco's Q2 FWA additions, but a slight uptick over the 342,000 subscribers that were added in the third quarter of 2022. 

Verizon said that 251,000 of its Q3 FWA additions came from residential customers, while 133,000 were on the commercial side. The wireless company has added 2.68 million fixed wireless home internet customers since launching the service in 2018. 

Verizon offers its "5G Home" FWA service for as little as $35 a month, delivering a wireless router, a two-year price guarantee and enough speed, the company says, to stream full 1080p HD video (you can see Verizon's landing page here).

Especially intriguing is the $45-a-month "5G Home Plus" package, which tacks on faster speed (enough for 4K video streaming, Verizon says), a three-year price lock, unlimited cloud storage, and a $200 gift card. 

Also read: Charter’s Winfrey Declares Cable King of Speed at SCTE 2023 … but Latest Ookla Data Shows T-Mobile’s 5G Fixed Wireless Access Quickly Catching Up

Cable operators, who have collectively seen their customer growth slow to a trickle in the last few years, condemn FWA offerings from Verizon, as well as market leader T-Mobile, as lacking the network capacity needed to compete with them longterm for home internet market share. 

Last week, research company Ookla published data from its Speedtest app in September revealing that median download speeds for T-Mobile's 5G network had reached 221.54 megabits per second, spitting distance from the Q3 wireline broadband champ, Cox Communications (260.09 Mbps). 

Verizon 5G median speeds came in a bit slower, but the company is still delivering enough speed to stream 4K at roughly half the price of wireline broadband. 

Verizon's FWA growth comes as the company's Fios Internet wireline product also showed vigor, adding 69,000 customers in Q3 vs. 57,000 in the same period last year. 

The company lost another 78,000 Fios linear video customers vs. 96,000 in Q3 2022. Verizon has just under 3.1 million remaining traditional video subscribers. 

With Verizon also beating consensus forecast on post-paid mobile phone adds (100,000 in the quarter, the company's first meaningful positive growth in two years), its stock surged nearly 9% as of early-afternoon trading on the Nasdaq. 

For his part, equity analyst Craig Moffett wonders if the customer growth should have been bigger. 

As FWA encroaches on cable's long-held wireline dominance, Moffett pondered Tuesday if, conversely, Verizon didn't make a huge mistake 12 years ago, when it opened the door to the wireless business for Comcast and Charter Communications by carving out an everlasting "MVNO" deal to let the cable companies piggyback on its wireless network. 

"When Verizon first signed their MVNO agreement in December 2011 with Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House, it looked to many to be a masterstroke" Moffett wrote in a note to investors. "They gained valuable spectrum -- don’t forget that the deal started with a purchase of cable’s AWS-1 spectrum -- and in the process took a potential facilities-based competitor out of the market. Better still, their agreement to resell cable broadband and for cable to resell Verizon wireless service (the MVNO) portended a future symbiosis between Verizon and the cable industry that would strengthen both in their competition with AT&T and T-Mobile. Twelve years on, things haven’t quite worked out as planned.

Twelve years later, the analyst noted, things have turned out different than as planned. 

"On the surface, the deal is a good one for Verizon," Moffett wrote. "For every three customers the MVNO acquires, only one is likely to have come from Verizon itself; even accounting for the higher contribution of retail, the wholesale gain is likely greater than the retail loss."

Below the surface, however, the math is hazy. Has the decline average revenue per wireless customer wrought by Comcast and Charter undercutting the market more offset the benefits of the MVNO deal?

"The answer hinges on one’s view of a single question: does the MVNO deflate industry ARPU? If it does, then whatever benefit the MVNO might unilaterally bring to Verizon will be more than offset by the general deflation caused by the mere presence in the market of cable’s low price point."

Continuing to respond to a bombshell Wall Street Journal report that the telecom industry has a huge, multibillion-dollar environmental problem to clean up with aging lead-lined cables, AT&T CEO John Stankey said during his company's Q2 earnings call Thursday that a deliberate review of the matter in conjunction with the EPA and other third parties is the most responsible way to evaluate to the situation.

“We’re very proud of our track record in addressing employee safety for those who perform maintenance and repair work on these cables,” Stankey said. “We take the concerns raised very seriously as there is no higher priority than the health and safety of our employees and the communities where we live and work, period.”

Also Read: Does the Telecom Industry Have an Exxon Valdez-Scale Problem on Its Hands With Toxic Lead Cables?

AT&T also said it will expand its existing lead-testing practices for employees involved in cable removal and add a voluntary testing program for any employee who has worked with lead-clad cables.

Verizon Communications CEO Hans Vestberg also addressed the situation during his company’s Q2 call on Tuesday, assuring investors that “the likelihood of exposure to lead from lead sheath cables is low,” and that because the cable does not go into individual homes or apartments, it is generally in locations that minimize the potential for public contact.

Vestberg said records are incomplete as to exactly how much of Verizon’s cable was made with lead sheathing, but it is a “small percentage.” Like AT&T, Verizon said it's working with a third party to conduct testing at sites that were identified by the media. 

“It is far too soon to make any projection on what the potential financial impact might be to the company,” Vestberg added. “There are a number of unknowns in this area, including whether there is a health risk presented by undisturbed lead sheath cable, and if there is a risk, how that risk should be addressed.”

The report published by The Wall Street Journal alleged that as many as 2,000 aging lead-laid pipes could be leaching toxicity into the environment in places like Lake Tahoe, California.

WSJ also accused telecom companies of knowing about the lead-covered cables and their potential risks and failing to monitor or act on the potential health risks. 

AT&T, which saw its stock plunge to a historic low following the report, has refuted the claims published by the WSJ regarding the Lake Tahoe region, saying in court documents that the results “differs dramatically from the expert testing commissioned by AT&T.”

A statement by U.S. Telecom via email reads, “The U.S. telecom industry prioritizes the health and safety of our communities and workers. We continue to engage with policymakers on this important matter to share relevant information as it becomes available. We will follow the existing science, which has not identified lead-sheathed telecom cables as a public health issue. And member companies will continue to gather information at specific locations and provide testing for employees.” 

Verizon Communications added another 384,000 fixed wireless access subscribers in the second quarter, upping its total base to 2.3 million.

The wireless giant added 256,000 FWA customers in the second quarter of 2022 and 393,000 from January to March of this year. 

T-Mobile, the other large wireless company peddling FWA, had 3.169 million FWA subs at the end of March. It will report its latest quarterly numbers on Thursday. 

Verizon reported an overall revenue dip of 3.5% to $32.6 billion in the second quarter, despite surging wireless sales. Net income came in at $4.8 billion, a decrease of 10.3% from second-quarter 2022,  (You can read the company's Q2 earnings release here.)

Tony Skiadas, Verizon’s new chief financial officer fielded equity analyst concerns about Verizon's exposure to lead-lined copper cables during the carrier’s second-quarter earnings call with investors.

“The likelihood of exposure to lead-sheathed cables is low,“ Skiadas said. ”In addition, because the cable was used as a feeder and distribution cable and does not run into individual homes or apartments, it is generally in locations that minimize the potential for public contact. 

“We are working with third-party experts to conduct our own testing on our sites that were identified by the media,” Skiadas added. “There are a number of unknowns in this area, including whether there is a health risk presented by undisturbed lead-sheathed cable and if there is a risk, how that risk should be addressed.”

Meanwhile, in other parts of Verizon's business, the company reported the loss of another 69,000 Fios TV pay TV customers in Q2, which was actually an improvement over the 87,000 lost pay TV souls in the second quarter of last year. 

Verizon only has around 3 million Fios TV subs left. 

Verizon announced the record addition of 393,000 fixed wireless access customers in the first quarter, with the company continuing to expand its FWA business as its only real rival in the sector, T-Mobile, may have bumped its head a bit on a ceiling of capacity issues. 

Verizon, which ended 2022 with 1.452 million fixed wireless home internet customers, added 379,000 in Q4. (You can read Verizons' full Q1 earnings release here.)

Factoring in 67,000 Fios Internet customer additions (vs. 60,000 in the same period of 2022), Verizon added 437,000 high-speed internet users in the first quarter. 

Verizon also lost 76,000 Fios linear pay TV customers in the first quarter vs. 78,000 year over year, dwindling its base to just 3.16 million remaining subscribers. 

While FWA is a nice little business that's currently carving a bit of wireline broadband market share from cable, Verizon, of course, is actually sized up by equity analysts based on the strength of its wireless business. And based on his report Tuesday morning, Craig Moffett wasn't all that impressed:

"Like AT&T a week ago, Verizon today reported results that speak to this challenging backdrop," Moffett wrote. "Subscriber growth metrics remain weak, with a shocking 478K retail phone subscriber loss across post-paid and pre-paid combined. Promotionality is increasingly weighing on ARPU. Service revenue growth is soft. Profitability is meh. Business wireline is in free fall. Absent the double-edged sword of growing wholesale wireless revenue as cable wireless takes market share, there are no growth stories here."

T-Mobile reports earnings on Thursday, as does Comcast. Charter Communications reports on Friday. 

Verizon on Thursday announced that it's adding Paramount Plus, along with nine other subscription video services, to its +Play wholesale app market. 

And starting on March 12, Verizon also said it’s restarting a super-aggressive promotion it conducted just last December when +Play emerged from beta — Verizon wireless and fixed wireless access home users will get a year free of the $19.99-a-month Netflix Premium tier when they sign up for a paid +Play subscription service. 

The other new services being added to +Play include: Blue Apron, FlixLatino, Kocowa+, Hallmark TV, Marquee TV, MasterClass, Quello Concerts by Stingray, UP Faith and Family, and Wondrium. 

The +Play market already includes Disney Plus, Hulu, ESPN Plus, Discovery Plus and AMC Plus, among many other services. 

“+Play features never-before-seen offers and bundles that give consumers the power to purchase the types of services and experiences they want at prices they’ll love. It’s a marketplace for our partners to leverage even broader direct-to-consumer reach and engagement, and it advances Verizon’s strategy of innovating and building new business models on our award-winning network,” Erin McPherson, chief content officer of Verizon Consumer Group, said in a statement. 

Verizon added 217,000 post-paid phone lines in the fourth quarter, along with a record 379,000 LTE and 5G FWA home internet customers. This subscriber growth came before the first Netflix promotion, however. 

Verizon has purchased 30 seconds of commercial time during Sunday’s 95th Oscars broadcast on ABC. Here's a look at that ad:

Adeia, the IP licensing unit recently spun off from Xperi Corp.,  announced a multi-year renewal deal with Verizon, sustaining the patent group's particularly strong position in the U.S. pay TV business. 

“Our patent license extension with Verizon further confirms the value and longevity of Adeia’s intellectual property portfolios, including in the U.S. pay-TV market,” said Dr. Mark Kokes, Adeia’s chief licensing officer and general manager for media, in a statement. 

Indeed, much has changed in regard to Adeia, which was established as an independent company last October and given a fancy ancient Greek name. But its ability to get U.S. pay TV operators to pay tech licensing royalties remains very much the same. 

Born out of aughts-era DVD security company Macrovision and its 2008 merger with Gemstar-TV Guide, Rovi had already assembled a significant patent library by 2016, the year it entered a $1.1 billion merger with TiVo and formed an IP licensing giant with more than 6,000 tech patents. 

In 2020, the Rovi patent business famously won a four-year row with Comcast that effectively served as a referendum for it to keep on billing each and every pay TV operator in North America, which it has.

In 2021, nearly two years after Xperi Corp. paid $3 billion to acquire the combined TiVo/Rovi, Xperi reported $350 million in revenue from its tech licensing division. 

Growth for Verizon's nascent fixed wireless access business continues to accelerate, with the wireless company reporting its biggest quarterly FWA customer expansion yet. 

Verizon added 379,000 FWA customers in the fourth quarter, culminating a second full year in the market for Verizon Home Internet during which the new service grew by nearly 1.2 million subscribers. 

Across business and consumer ranks, Verizon now has 1.452 million fixed wireless access customers and is beginning to close the gap on FWA market leader T-Mobile, which ended Q3 with over 2 million FWA customers. T-Mobile reports Q4 earnings next week (Feb. 1). 

More notably, the expansion of inexpensive wireless services that bring 5G internet into the home has undercut cable, which has suddenly stopped growing wireline internet customers. Verizon is selling its Home Internet for as little as $25 a month. 

"FWA remains Verizon’s most promising growth area. Indeed, it remains the most tangible revenue stream from 5G," equity analyst Craig Moffett wrote in an investor note Tuesday morning. 

For its part, Verizon hasn't abandoned its wireline broadband position, either, reporting 59,000 Fios Internet additions in the fourth quarter. Fios Internet has more than 7.5 million customers in the U.S. 

“Total broadband net additions of 416,000 was the best total broadband performance in over a decade, reflecting a strong demand for FiOS and fixed wireless products,” Verizon said in a statement. 

Verizon also reported a 3.5% year-over-year increase in revenue to $35.3 billion.

Post paid net additions in Verizon's consumer wireless sector were strong, too. (You can read all about that in Verizon's Q4 earnings release.) But with Verizon tempering its growth outlook for the near term future, the company's stock remained largely flat in Tuesday trading. 

One aspect of the business the company does seem to be walking away from: Linear pay TV. 

Fios TV lost another 80,000 customers in Q4, with the base dwindling to just over 3.3 million. Verizon has now slipped to rank as only the eighth largest distributor of linear pay TV services in America. Verizon lost 69,000 Fios TV customers in the fourth quarter of 2021. 

Verizon is now focused on offering third-party video services to its wireless connectivity customers via +play, its wholesale Amazon Channels-like service. 

Verizon has moved its "Channels"-like OTT wholesale market, +play, from the trial phase to beta, and it's offering a pretty big trinket to entice signups. 

Starting this week, Verizon mobile, and 5G and LTE fixed wireless access customers who sign up for a streaming service through +play will receive 12 free months of the $19.99 Netflix Premium tier. (Yes, mathletes, that's a $240 value. You can read the Verizon announcement here.)

OTT services currently available via  +play include Disney Plus, Hulu, NFL Plus, NBA League Pass, AMC Plus, Peloton App ... and, yes, HBO Max, which is notably reversing its course and returning to the Channels wholesale markets under its new retrograde Warner Bros. Discovery overlords. 

Also read: Is Verizon +play the True Next-Generation MVPD?

Verizon introduced +play in trial phase back in March, offering customers access to popular streaming services through its own app and integrated billing. Verizon is using the same successful wholesale business model deployed by Amazon Prime Video Channels and Roku Channels, among other companies. 

These wholesale platforms recoup up to half of revenue generated by service providers who participate in their respective marketplaces (although, Verizon hasn't disclosed its revenue-sharing requirements publicly). Channels store operators also get primary access to all the customer data, not to mention control of billing and other aspects of the subscriber relationship. 

In exchange, service providers drive customer growth and scale. For many SVOD services, Amazon Prime Video Channels remains their biggest growth engine. 

“The exclusive relationships Verizon has with the top subscription services and content providers, coupled with our distribution scale and customer retention, differentiates us and makes us the partner of choice for providers and customers alike,” said Verizon Chief Content Officer Erin McPherson. “On +play, customers can get savings and value they can’t access anywhere else and our content providers get vast distribution and stickiness that’s beyond reproach.”

Fixed Wireless Access services from T-Mobile and Verizon added a combined 920,000 home internet customers in the third quarter, driving a rather sudden and dramatic sea change in the U.S. broadband industry, according to new quarterly data published this week by Leichtman Research Group.

In fact, these economy-priced, 5G-powered FWA services led the broader U.S. high-speed internet (HSI) industry to growth at a time when the cable industry has virtually stopped adding high-speed internet subscribers, and losses of DSL and other legacy-tech-based services aren't being offset by additions of new fiber-to-the-home customers for telco wireline operators. 

Also read: Fixed Wireless Access Gets Put to the Test in Major Markets - Why 'Middle of the Pack' Looks Good Enough to Us

Year over year, T-Mobile have added nearly 2.6 million FWA customers. Since the end of the third quarter of 2021, the top seven U.S. cable operators have lost around 400,000  HSI customers, while the top seven telco companies have bled around 700,000 customers from their home internet ranks. 

“Over the past year, fixed wireless services have accounted for nearly 80% of the approximately 3,260,000 net broadband additions," said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, Inc. 

What's perhaps so surprising is how fast the shift has come. The top MSOs added only around 39,000 HSI customers in the third quarter, with narrow gains by Comcast and Charter offset by losses at Altice USA. In the third quarter of 2021, these same cable operators added a combined 592,400 broadband customers. In the pandemic-influenced Q3 of 2020, they tacked on over 1.3 million customers in just three months. 

Wireline telcos, meanwhile, added 550,000 customers to newer fiber-to-the-home services in Q3, but these losses were offset by attrition of 685,000 subscribers to non-fiber HSI services. 

In total, non-FWA services lost nearly 100,000 customers from July - September. ■

Innovid said it is rolling out new advanced features on its ad tech platform that optimize creative executions in campaigns using connected TV and provide granular insights about how ads are performing.

Verizon is among the first clients to utilize the new technology.

“Innovid’s auto optimization enables algorithmic decisioning to constantly iterate for the KPIs you care most about,” said Steve Murray, director performance marketing, MarTech, & Analytics at Verizon. “Simply activated but highly customizable, Innovid is providing the technology needed to make everyday enhancements a reality.”

The new Innovid tools work by intelligently adjusting the rotation of ad creative in real time, while providing feedback on the effectiveness of elements within the creative executions.

The technology lets advertisers implement testing and make in flight changes in the creative elements in order to find the combinations that drive peak performance and inform future planning.

Also: The Trade Desk Adds Innovid Measurement in U.K., Germany

“At this moment efficiency is a top priority. Marketers know their campaigns sit on a sea of data, but need automated solutions that allow them to access and activate it at scale,” said Dan Mouradian, VP global client solutions at Innovid. “As an industry, we've done a good job streamlining the setup and personalization process, but the ability to implement complex learnings in real-time has lagged behind. With these further advancements, we’re primed to deliver a new generation of always-on intelligence to marketers.” ■

Nexstar Media Group said it reached a new multi-year retransmission consent agreement with Verizon Fios, ending a two-week blackout.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The dispute impacted more than 3 million subscribers in 10 markets, according to Nexstar.

Also: Nexstar Risks $6.7 Million Per Month in Lost Fees During Fios Blackout

Also being restored to Fios subscribers is Nexstar's cable news network NewsNation.

"We're pleased that our customers' programming will be restored and that we can continue delivering content they enjoy," Verizon Fios said in a statement.

The agreement will ensure that Verizon subscribers won't miss a moment of Major League Baseball's World Series, which begins Friday, or any of this weekend's college and NFL football games, Nexstar noted.

Nexstar's stations also add distribution as midterm election races reach an end. Political advertising is generating millions of dollars for local station groups. ■

You don't have to look hard these days to find a downer report about the fate of linear television. 

And only a few key earnings calls into the Q3 reporting cycle, the news seems likely to get worse. 

Update: Several hours after this story was filed, Google announced that YouTube had experienced its first quarterly decline in ad sales ever, with Q3 revenue dropping nearly 2% to $7.07 billion. You can read that story here. 

As the first major pay TV operator to offer third-quarter customer metrics, Verizon reported the loss of around 95,000 Fios TV customers. As elegantly showcased by Lightshed Partners, that represented a surge of around 8.8% over the circa-87,000 customers lost to Verizon Fios TV in the second quarter. 

The rate of cord-cutting also increased by a similar .8% rate from Q1 - Q2 for the wireless giant, after it had held largely steady for 18 months (see graphic). 

With Comcast and Charter Communications set to deliver their Q3 reports later this week, expect video cord cutting to quite possibly re-emerge as a key issue. Comcast has lost 512,000 and 520,000 customers, respectively, in the first and second quarters of 2022. 

Meanwhile, Lightshed analyst Richard Greenfield triangulated another early-Q3-season earnings report from Snap Inc., during which strong concerns were expressed about the current advertising sales market. 

Snap Co-Founder and CEO Evan Spiegel spoke at length about navigating "this difficult macro environment that has impacted our advertising business over the past few quarters." 

Responding to both Verizon's and Snap's metrics, Greenfield tweeted over the weekend, "Not a good start to earnings for anyone in the broadcast or cable TV network biz," noting that the Snap report signals a meaningful "pullback in brand ad spend in Q4 as recession fears build." 

Tracking the executive pessimism on its latest "Earnings Scorecard," Lightshed also  found that, among the 69 companies it tracks, mentions of the term "recession" increased to 60 in the second quarter vs. just two in the third quarter of 2021. 

Observing the behavior of one of the video business' biggest advertisers, Procter & Gamble, during its Q3 call last week, we didn't find a mention of the "R" word even once. 

But the company did discuss a "very challenging cost environment, with CFO Andre Schulten noting, "When you think about our marketing spend, we estimate there is still significant opportunity to optimize in the ability to reach consumers more broadly and more effectively at significantly lower cost as our digital reach increases." ▪️

Verizon Communications on Friday touted the addition of 234,000 fixed wireless access residential customers in the third quarter and another 108,000 FWA subscribers on the business-services side, upping its total FWA base to over 1 million users.

It's been a rapid emergence for FWA technology, which lets consumers use 5G wireless networks for home internet service. T-Mobile, which reports its Q3 numbers on October 27, now has more than 1.5 million FWA customers.

Verizon added only 38,000 wireline internet customers otherwise, with less-than-expected growth in its legacy Fios internet business being offset by sustained losses of digital subscriber line (DSL) customers.

But the bottom-line addition of 272,000 total wireline broadband users for Verizon will likely be far more than either Comcast or Charter Communications report for the third quarter when they do their earnings calls next week.

For Verizon, the FWA story provides a little buffer from the more challenging economics currently impacting its core wireless business, where it added only 8,000 postpaid customers in the quarter.

And the company's pay TV presence continued to dwindle in Q3, with its Fios TV service losing another 95,000 customers, a 40% year-over-year surge in cord-cutting. Verizon has just under 3.5 million remaining Fios TV subscribers.

Verizon's stock was down around 5% in afternoon trading Friday. ▪️

Just weeks after adding mobile streaming service NFL Plus to its +play subscription marketplace, Verizon has announced the integration of NBA League Pass, as well.

Verizon will now let its wireless and home internet customers sign up for the NBA's direct-to-consumer streaming service through its apps, while handling all aspects of the customer relationship, including billing.

Verizon launched +play earlier this year. The free service, similar to Amazon Prime Video Channels, lets users centralize and manage an increasing range of digital entertainment subscriptions, including  HBO Max, Netflix, Peloton, The Athletic, Calm, Duolingo and TelevisaUnivision’s Vix+.

NBA League Pass lets users stream all out-of-market games live. The league is selling the base tier of the package, which allows for one stream at a time, for $99.99 this season. 

“Verizon has a track record of providing our customers incredible value, as well as great premium content from leading services," said Erin McPherson, chief content officer for Verizon.  "As one of the largest direct-to-consumer distributors in the country, we’re solving for millions of customers’ pain points by providing them with an innovative tool to manage and get exclusive deals on multiple subscriptions all in one place.”

The blackout of Nexstar Media Group stations in households served by Verizon Fios TV is putting $6.7 million in retransmission and distribution fees per month at risk, according to an analysis by S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Nexstar’s retransmission-consent agreement with Verizon Communications expired on Friday and the two sides were unable to reach an agreement on an extension.

The dispute impacts 14 full-power Nexstar stations in 11 markets. S&P estimates Verizon serves about 22.3% of the 11.3 million TV households in the market.

Also blacked out is NewsNation, Nexstar’s cable news network.

Kagan also estimates that in the second quarter, the affected Nexstar stations averaged $4.19 a month per subscriber in fees. Those fees are expected to go up in a new agreement. If Nexstar gets $4.25 per month, it would generate $79.4 million in revenue annually.

Nexstar advertising revenue is also in jeopardy, with both the midterm elections and holiday-shopping period approaching.

Kagan estimated the affected stations would generate $316 million in ad revenue in 2022, with $70.5 million coming from the blacked-out homes. That’s $5.9 million a month.

It is harder to estimate what Verizon Fios has at risk. The pay TV business is already declining at a precipitous rate and it’s hard to tell, even during football season, how quickly subscribers will pull the plug and switch to another provider.

But once a pay TV distributor loses a subscriber, it’s difficult to get them back, which puts pressure on cable operators, satellite companies and telcos during retransmission disputes.

In contrast, station ad revenue usually returns to pre-blackout levels shortly after a new distribution agreement is reached. ■

Fixed Wireless Access subscriber additions are expected to rise sharply in the next two years, according to MoffettNathanson senior analyst Craig Moffett, but then moderate in later years, as its rural base begins to saturate.

In a series of slides posted on its website, MoffettNathanson predicted that T-Mobile and Verizon will add 2 million and 1 million FWA customers, respectively, in 2022 and 2023, up from 546,000 and 173,000 in 2021. But that growth is expected to begin to trail off in 2024, to 1.3 million for T-Mobile and 700,000 for Verizon, falling further by 2025 to 500,000 additions for each company, according to Moffett. By 2026, Moffett predicts T-Mobile will add about 200,000 FWA subscribers and Verizon 400,000 FWA customers, according to the report. 

T-Mobile added 565,000 FWA customers in Q2 2022, soundly beating analysts’ estimates, and is expected to finish the year with more than 2 million fixed wireless customers. The company has said it expects to have between 7 million and 8 million FWA customers by 2025. 

Moffett’s predictions are slightly less aggressive than some analysts who have estimated that fixed wireless could add as many as 10 million additional subscribers by 2027, but they’re not that far off. According to his estimates, T-Mobile and Verizon would add a collective 9.6 million additional FWA customers by the end of 2026. 

Though FWA appears to be a viable alternative to cable broadband, Moffett and other analysts have warned, it has mainly been deployed in rural areas and attracted residential and business customers not targeted by wired service. For example, fixed wireless has been extremely popular with construction trailers and food trucks, business customers that aren’t able to receive wired service.

That appears to be backed up by an earlier MoffettNathanson report, which cited estimates from Boston-based market researcher Comlinkdata that 33% of T-Mobile’s broadband customers are in rural areas, representing just 6% of the company’s total homes passed. In addition, Comlinkdata estimated that 88% of T-Mobile’s FWA customers are coming from the 36% of its network that is underutilized.

Looking Beyond Rural Markets

At the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference earlier this month, Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg said the company plans to expand the service beyond rural markets.

“[W]e’re going to open up new opportunities outside the suburban, out of rural as well, where it's even greater opportunities for us,” Vestberg said of FWA at the Goldman conference. “Our devices coming out on fixed wireless access will basically cover all the frequencies we have, all the way from millimeter wave, C-band and 4G low-band, which is going to make this product enormously great.” 

Cable operators have been keeping an eye on fixed-wireless competition, but have in the past dismissed the service as inferior to wired broadband. But as their own cable broadband subscriber growth has slowed considerably, they are at least giving some credit to the service. 

At the Bank of America Securities conference earlier in September, Charter Communications chief financial officer Jessica Fischer acknowledged that fixed wireless played a role, albeit small, in its Q2 subscriber declines. Later at the BofA conference, Comcast deputy chief financial officer Jason Armstrong said that although fixed wireless is seeing gains, he is most concerned about fiber competition. 

Also: Wireless Connectivity Will Determine Winners in Broadband, Streaming Race, Rutledge Says 

Even other telcos have joined in on the fixed-wireless bashing. Frontier Communications CEO Nick Jeffery said at the Communacopia conference that comparing fixed wireless to fiber was like “comparing a Ferrari to a horse.”

According to Moffett, telcos and cable service providers should worry more about fiber. Planned fiber to the home passings more than doubled in 2021 to 4.2 million from 1.9 million in 2020, and he predicts that they should nearly double again to 7.8 million passings by 2022. He added that planned fiber passings will rise to 9.4 million in 2023, 9 million in 2024 and 8.3 million in 2025. Most of those gains will come from projects from three carriers: AT&T, Lumen (with Apollo Global) and Frontier. Moffett estimates that AT&T will add 4,000 fiber passings in 2022, 3.75 million in 2023, 3.25 million in 2024 and 2.6 million in 2025. Lumen is expected to add 1 million, 2.4 million, 2.5 million and 2.5 million passings in the same time frame, while Frontier should add 1 million, 1.5 million, 1.6 million and 1.6 million, according to Moffett.

But those deployments are not without risks, mostly on the cost side, where labor and equipment expenditures are expected to rise, Moffett wrote. As providers build out in less populated areas the cost per home passed will also increase, as well as capital costs due to inflation and a “higher equity risk premium,” Moffett wrote. ■ 

Verizon has signed on as the official advertising launch sponsor of Nuestra.TV, the streaming platform for Hispanic viewers from Adsmovil USA that became available Wednesday. 

Nuestra.TV, a free service, offers 40 FAST channels and 15,000 hours of video on demand content.   

“We have over a decade of experience creating content and reaching Hispanics, across generations, cultural origins, and languages, and with Nuestra.TV we are uniquely positioned to provide Hispanic cord cutters with a platform that is inclusive and authentic, and informed by content that is culturally and linguistically relevant, informative, and engaging,” said Adsmovil CEO Alberto Pardo, who is also president, and CEO, Nuestra.TV.

“We are thrilled to partner with Verizon to expand our reach and capability of providing viewers with culturally resonant, authentic and engaging programming, including bilingual and bicultural options that are designed for each member of la familia,” Pardo said.

Nuetra.TV features movies, TV series and novellas from content providers including VIP 2000 TV, The Country Network, Planet EAT, Young Hollywood, Caracol, Mega Global Entertainment, RM Vistar, and Spanglish Films.

It also provides live news and sports.  ■

Verizon Communications shares dipped more than 3% Thursday after MoffettNathanson downgraded the stock to "underperform" from "market perform," and lowered his 12-month price target on the stock to $41 from $55 each, adding that the company is losing ground to lower pricing from AT&T, better 5G networks from T-Mobile, and the increasing threat of cable wireless. 

Verizon stock was priced as low as $43.91 in early trading August 18, down 3.2% or $1.13 per share, after MoffettNathanson senior analyst Craig Moffett wrote that two years after AT&T started its aggressive pricing strategy, Verizon has "seesawed between periods of promotionality and financial restraint, optimizing neither. They have recently pulled back sharply on promotions, a reversal of their approach in Q2, and have introduced a suite of lower priced plans instead. There are no easy answers."

Verizon shares closed at $44.19 each on August 18, down 2.5% or $1.15 per share. 

At the same time, Verizon appears to be losing the battle with T-Mobile, which still has the lowest pricing in the industry despite spending heavily to build out its 5G network. T-Mobile now has the largest 5G network in the country, a crown that used to be worn by Verizon.

Adding to the pressure is the emergence of cable wireless. Moffett noted that Comcast, Charter Communications and Altice USA added a combined 694,000 wireless customers in Q2, about 100,000 customers more than in the same period last year. Cable now accounts for more than 9 million wireless customers, still only about 3% of the market, but it is growing. And recently Cox Communications said it was beta testing its own wireless MVNO, which Moffett wrote "will only add to the pressure on the incumbents."

Also: Analyst Says it's Time to Take Cable Wireless Seriously 

Moffett's outlook isn't much better for AT&T. While the analyst maintained his "market perform" rating on the stock, he lowered his 12-month price target to $17 per share from $19 because of lower growth expectations. But Moffett raised his price target on T-Mobile to $174 each from $165, citing its strong growth prospects. ■

As the cable industry debates, deliberates and denies the impact of fixed wireless access on its suddenly stalled broadband subscriber growth, top U.S. MSOs continue to expand its own encroachment on wireless turf, as well. 

Comcast, Charter Communications and -- to a more nascent extent -- Altice USA, collectively added nearly 700,000 wireless customers in the second quarter, matching their Q1 mobile growth performance.

Together these three tier 1 U.S. cable operators now have 9.2 million mobile lines between them. 

And their being followed into the mobile fray by what one wireless analyst has termed "junior cable" -- privately held Cox Communications, WideOpenWest (WOW) and -- possibly -- Mediacom will soon enter the wireless market in "phase 2" of cable's mobile expansion. 

According to Jeff Moore, who runs Wave7 Research, it's been the collective weight of the cable industry, not the nascent 5G building efforts of Dish Network, that has replaced swallowed-up Sprint as the nation's No. 4 wireless carrier. 

Beyond that, NCTC CEO Lou Borrelli told Next TV in June that his cooperative is now aggressively involved with negotiating wholesale "MVNO" network lease deals with wireless companies on behalf of its some its more than 700 member cable operators, who he said have become interested in mobile very quickly upon seeing the quick growth experienced by Comcast and Charter. 

The growing influence of cable in the U.S. mobile industry  creates an interesting narrative of competitive juxtaposition, with T-Mobile and Verizon collectively adding 800,000 fixed wireless access customers in Q2, while Comcast and Charter flatlined on fixed high-speed internet expansion. 

But this modern telecom-centric retelling of the ol' East Coast vs. West Coast rivalry is deceiving. 

Both Comcast and Charter have built, largely in partnership, their respective Xfinity Mobile and Spectrum Mobile businesses on the backs of an MVNO deal with Verizon, while Altice USA recently established a new MVNO arrangement with T-Mobile. 

These cable mobile operations are designed to heavily tap into the Wi-Fi resources provided by the MSO's fixed broadband networks, but there's still significant reliance on the MVNO partner -- so the more MVNO customers Verizon and T-Mobile have, the more they benefit. 

According to information compiled by Recon Analytics Data (via FierceWireless), 27% of Xfinity Mobile and Spectrum Mobile customers acquired in July were Verizon defectors. 

But Verizon is earning $13.13 a month from MVNO partnerships that not only include Comcast and Charter, but myriad other wireless providers, including  US Mobile, Red Pocket Mobile, Lively and Affinity Cellular. Since Verizon doesn't have to market to those customers and support the subscriber relationship, it actually makes more money on the MVNO customers, Recon said. 

Conversely, not only do top cable executives, including Comcast Chief Executive Brian Roberts, continue to dismiss the capacity of wireless networks to be able to compete with cable at scale over time, Recon also said that many of the 2.1 million FWA customers acquired by T-Mobile and Verizon so far have been new fixed high-speed internet subscribers, not cable defectors.

"It's not a zero sum game," Recond founder Roger Entner said. 

Cox Communications has knocked Verizon off its long-held perch as the fastest provider of fixed broadband internet in the U.S. 

Verizon had placed No. 1 in the quarterly Ookla Speedtest Intelligence ranking of fixed ISP download speeds since the beginning of 2020. But privately owned cable company Cox, delivering a download pace of 197.73 megabits per second, finished first in the second quarter. 

Verizon (171.01 Mbps) fell to fourth place, behind Comcast (184.08 Mbps) and Charter Communications (183.74 Mbps). 

There's one important caveat here: Ookla compiles its rankings based on customer-run queries on its Speedtest.net platform, and the company just switched its ranking currency from the "mean" to the "median." 

"We implemented this change to more accurately represent the typical performance that consumers actually experience on a network," an Ookla rep told CNET. 

Notably, Cox ranked No. 6 on a list of the fastest uploaded speeds for fixed providers  at 10.6 Mpbs. Verizon ranked second at 112.36, followed by first-place finisher Frontier (113.21 Mpbs). 

Verizon did still rank as the top fixed ISP provider in terms of latency, and Verizon and Cox finished Nos. 1 and 2 in regard to how their networks handle streaming video. 

In terms of regional rankings, Charter Spectrum ranked as the fasters fixed ISP in California, delivering a median download speed of 168.91 Mbps. Verizon ranked No. 1 in New York at 177.45. 

The city with the fastest internet in America? That would be Gilbert, Arizona, which had a median download speed of 253.21 Mbps in Q2.

Cable One reported Q2 results on Thursday, missing analysts’ consensus targets for broadband subscriber growth, as one influential analyst believes its problems may only be beginning.

Cable One added 1,300 residential broadband customers in Q2, soundly missing analysts’ consensus estimates of 5,200 additions. While some analysts wrote off the miss as part of the overall decline in broadband growth the rest of the industry is experiencing -- the top three publicly traded cable operators either reported flat or negative broadband customer growth in Q2 -- MoffettNathanson senior analyst Craig Moffett feared it could be a sign of stiffer competition from fixed wireless access providers. 

Cable One, like the rest of the cable industry, has seen its stock price slip this year. As of Thursday (August 4), Cable One shares were down about 18% for the year to $1,441.80 each. On Friday (August 5), the stock slipped another 5% to $1,368.19 per share in early trading.  

Also: Analyst Says Telcos Better Positioned to Chip Away at Cable's Broadband Lead 

But even through that difficulty, Cable One has enjoyed one of the strongest trading multiples in the cable business. Cable One stock was trading at a 37% premium to Charter Communications on August 4 -- mainly because its largely rural footprint was free from serious fiber broadband competition and its relatively low market penetrations meant it had a long runway for growth. In a research note on August 4, Moffett noted that those days may be over as fixed wireless offerings take hold. 

“Fixed wireless has found its greatest success in rural markets, where the market is underserved and price sensitive, and when carriers tend to have excess capacity,” Moffett wrote. “Cable One’s broadband growth has slowed along with everyone else’s, and they may now arguably face more competition than peers, at least from FWA.”

Fixed wireless growth has been strong in Q2, with T-Mobile adding 560,000 FWA customers in the period, well above analysts expectations, and Verizon adding about 256,000 FWA subscribers. T-Mobile overlaps between 40% and 50% of Cable One’s footprint, according to Wells Fargo Securities media analyst Steven Cahall, but the company said it hasn’t seen much of an increase in FWA competition so far. 

In a conference call with analysts Thursday, Cable One CEO Julie Laulis said that T-Mobile hasn’t had much of an impact on Cable One, adding that it appears that most of T-Mobile’s additions in Cable One’s footprint are former telco digital subscriber line customers. Verizon’s impact, she said, has been “virtually nothing.”

“Overlap does not take into account network quality/capacity, which we think accounts for the difference here,” Cahall wrote in a note to clients. “[Cable One] has also segmented its customer base with higher speed offerings, which we think further insulates the threat.”

Also: Cable's Broadband Slowdown Hasn't Hit Bottom Yet, Analyst Says

Moffett stressed that he  wasn’t criticizing Cable One management or its business, but merely pointing out that the hefty premium its stock price has enjoyed over the years may not be entirely justified. 

“What we are struggling with is stock selection within a cable sector that we believe is oversold and underappreciated,” Moffett wrote. “As much as we admire Cable One, we struggle to see why such a large premium – indeed, any premium – is warranted here. We believe there are better opportunities to be had elsewhere in the group.”

The analyst also worried that without a wireless play to fall back on, the outlook could be even bleaker. Wireless has been the biggest growth engine for Comcast and Charter as broadband growth has declined.  

“Is any premium at all justified if Cable One’s growth prospects are no better – and arguably, without wireless, worse – than Charter’s?” Moffett asked. 

Adding to the pressure is Cable One’s relatively high prices for broadband -- its $80.44 residential ARPU is 23% higher than Charter’s. Although its ARPU can be a bit misleading -- it has extremely low penetration of video, meaning that those remaining generally pay for much more expensive tiers of service, which helps boost the number -- Moffett noted that Cable One customers also tend to pay for higher speeds of broadband which are more costly. That could mean that Cable One has extracted most of the benefit from the video/broadband mix that lies ahead than its cable peers, he said.

That, Moffett wrote, could be enough to send growth metrics southward. He added that with a predominantly rural footprint with customers that have the least disposable income in MoffettNathanson’s coverage universe, Cable One is more vulnerable to price competition. While that had little effect when competitors couldn’t justify building out their networks to its markets, lower cost FWA makes it a whole new ballgame.

“As a percentage of disposable income, Cable One’s prices are the highest in the industry. This could make them more vulnerable to competitive price-based offers and to macroeconomic weakness,” Moffett wrote.  ■ 

Things are tough all over in the technology-media-telecom sector -- not only are big streaming companies like Netflix and Roku experiencing suddenly stalled growth and chilly investor relations, a retreat back to the comforts of linear distribution looks like a nonstarter. 

Three of the five largest traditional bundlers of pay TV channels in America delivered second-quarter earnings reports this week, and each revealed marked increases in the number of customers ditching linear video service. 

Verizon lost 86,000 Fios TV customers in Q2 vs. 62,000 in the same period of last year. 

Comcast lost 512,000 pay TV customers in the second quarter, up from 399,000 in Q2 2021. 

Charter Communications bled out another 240,000 Spectrum TV customers from April to June, up from just 63,000 in the same period last year. Two years ago, amid a flurry of broadcast connectivity signups from suddenly quarantined and desperate new customers, Charter added 94,000 video subscribers in Q2. 

Dish Network, which lost 132,000 linear satellite TV customers in the second quarter of last year, will report metrics for Dish satellite and Sling TV in a few weeks. 

And soon, Disney will also offer insight on Hulu+ Live TV. Beyond that, we have pretty much all the publicly effacing cord-cutting picture we're likely to get, and it ain't pretty. 

Where are these pay TV refugees going to get their TV fix?

Roku, which had a miserable Q2 report Thursday amid what appears to be slowing advanced advertising sales, did say that its active user growth perked up in the second quarter, increasing to 1.8 million users versus 1.2 million in Q1. 

Beyond that, the video business is becoming a shrouded realm, full of spinoffs and joint ventures that are harder to get metrics on. 

Comcast, for example, noted Thursday that its app-based video JV with Charter will come off the books in the third quarter. The cable giant will stop revealing customer and financial data on services like the ad-supported Xumo, and it won't be compelled to talk about how many out-of-footprint customers are getting into platforms like XClass TV.

Essentially, Comcast's entire portfolio of app-based, beyond-footprint video experiences is going behind a wall, so we won't be able to necessarily trade a clean line between customers, say, ditching the traditional Xfinity X1 Full Monty and adopting X1-like app-based viewing via an XClass smart TV. 

Indeed, there are more dark places to hide in the video business than not these days. That starts with the vast market capitalizations of the tech giants, who rarely drill down on the quarterly usage metrics of their video apps and CTV device platforms. 

While revealing a net loss of nearly $2 billion in the second quarter on Thursday, Amazon didn't come close to drilling down on how many folks use Amazon Prime Video worldwide, or its connected TV platform, Amazon Fire TV. 

Likewise, Apple hasn't once revealed a subscriber -- or even active user -- metric for Apple TV Plus. How many active users does the Apple TV 4K CTV ecosystem have? Outside of research company estimates, we have no clue. 

Meanwhile, before it revealed decelerating Q2 ad sales for its YouTube platform, Google/Alphabet said its virtual MVPD, YouTube TV, had reached 5 million users. But we have no idea when that benchmark was actually reached or how fast the streaming service -- now the fifth largest pay TV platform -- is growing ... or not growing. Alphabet rarely drills down on it for its investors. 

Back in the realm of linear, AT&T still owns the third largest linear pay TV brand in America, DirecTV, which encompasses satellite TV, the DirecTV-branded vMVPD service and the legacy U-verse TV platform. These services collectively shed around 473,00 customers in the second quarter of 2021. But again, since AT&T spun DirecTV off last year in a JV with private equity, we no longer have a visual. ■

Comcast reported zero customer growth in the area of high-speed internet in the second quarter, right after T-Mobile and Verizon collectively touted the addition of more than 800,000 fixed wireless access customers from April - June.

Keeping with the cable industry's ongoing broader mantra, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts insisted he's still not worried about it.

Citing the significant "longterm limitations" of FWA, Roberts described the technology as a "temporary opportunity targeted to value-oriented customers," one driven by a short-term excess of wireless capacity that will soon abate as FWA proliferation increases.

Also read: Comcast Reports Flat Broadband Growth in Q2

Meanwhile, Roberts conceded that the quickening uptake of FWA is impacting Comcast's connections metrics, it hasn't influenced churn. 

Comcast added 354,000 high-speed internet customers in the second quarter of 2021 and 323,000 in the pandemic-impacted April-June period of 2020. 

Writing for our Multichannel News vertical Thursday, Mike Ferrell took a deep dive into whether the growth slowdown being experienced by Comcast and other cable operators is more a matter of saturation than competition from fiber, FWA and other technologies. 

Also read: Cable Broadband Customer Growth Was Down by Around 500K in Q1 ... but Fixed Wireless Added 500K

Certainly, FWA has to be considered a factor. T-Mobile this week reported the addition of 560,000 high-speed internet customers, right after Verizon touted 256,000 FWA additions in Q2. 

And whether it's "temporary" or not, that's influencing Comcast investors, who tanked the stock over 8% Thursday. Charter Communications, which reports earnings Friday, also saw its stock drop over 8%. 

A day after AT&T shares tanked after reducing free cash flow guidance for the year, rival telco Verizon Communications watched its stock near its four-year low on Friday after telling investors it, too, won’t meet its earlier financial targets.

Verizon shares fell as low as $44.38 each, down 7% or $3.28 per share. The decline came after Verizon said in its Q2 earnings release that it would reduce full-year cash flow guidance from 2%-to-3% growth to a 1.5% decline, and earnings per share would be in the range of $5.10 to $5.25 per share instead of earlier targets of $5.40 to $5.55 per share. In addition, Verizon said wireless service revenue would grow 8.5% to 9% for the year, instead of 9% to 10%, while other service revenue should be down 1% to flat, below earlier targets of flat growth.

The guidance reduction comes after AT&T said on Thursday it would miss its previous full year free cash flow target, sending its stock down as much as 10% for the day. Shares closed July 21 down about 7%, and fell another 3% on Friday.

The missed guidance for Verizon compounded what was a disappointing quarter for the telco. Verizon added 268,000 broadband customers, 256,000 of which were fixed wireless subscribers. Fios additions at 36,000 for the period were below some analysts estimates of 45,000 additions. But the company also reported it lost 215,000 postpaid wireless customers in the period, more than four times some analysts estimates of a loss of 60,000 customers. In a research note Friday, Barclays Group media and telecom analyst Kannan Venkateshwar, who earlier in the day lowered his rating on AT&T to “equal weight” from “overweight” and reduced his price target on the stock to $20 per share, said Verizon’s wireless performance could potentially make the first half of 2022 its worst ever.

“More importantly, there isn’t an easy path to turning this around given the company’s market positioning as the highest priced provider in a saturated market with growing low-priced competition and increasingly challenged macro backdrop,” Venkateshwar wrote. “Not surprisingly, the company announced a lower priced entry tier recently but this may merely turn out to be a tool to offset elevated churn due to recent price increases across the entire base, the impact of which is likely to be seen in 3Q.” ■

The Federal Communications Commission said 82 applicants have qualified to bid on new midband spectrum in the upcoming 2.5-GHz auction scheduled to begin July 29. The FCC said 11 applicants had not qualified.

Qualified bidders include AT&T, Verizon Communications, T-Mobile, and U.S. Cellular.

Bidders can get early access to the bidding system July 22 and the FCC will hold a mock auction July 26 and 27.

The real auction will begin with a single, six-hour, bidding round July 29 (10 a.m.-4 p.m.), and move to two, two-hour rounds on August 1 (10 a.m.-12 p.m. and 2 p.m.-4 p.m.) going forward, with the pace of the auction changing depending on the progress of the bidding. The FCC increases the number of rounds and decreases the length to goose the auction when bidding slows.

The FCC is opening up midband spectrum in the 2.5 GHz band for 5G. It is currently used, the FCC says underused, by educational broadband services (EBS).

EBS, formerly Instructional Television Fixed Service, or ITFS, was used in the 1960s for closed-circuit broadcasts to educational institutions, but was rebooted in the early 2000s and pointed toward broadband.

Also: FCC Closes Tribal Window for 12 GHz

The FCC has eliminated use requirements and leasing restrictions on the band.

It also created an early local priority window for tribal nations that drew over 400 applications. ■

With the second-quarter earnings season almost upon us, cable investors should prepare themselves for an even steeper falloff in broadband subscriber growth, according to Barclays Group media analyst Kannan Venkateshwar.

Comcast is expected to kick off the Q2 earnings season on July 28, followed by Charter Communications on July 29. But in a research report Thursday, Venkateshwar wrote that there is little hope that the months-long slowdown in broadband growth is nearing an end.

It’s been almost a full year since analysts began bracing for cable broadband additions to slow, and it seems like every quarter there is another call that the impact could be even greater than expected. Analysts have already modified their forecasts for the bigger operators, with some expecting full-year 2022 additions to be nearly one-third of those of the peak year of 2020. Now, with the added pressure of increased fiber buildouts by telcos like AT&T and Verizon Communications, aggressive pricing, the near disappearance of digital subscriber line customers — once a top feeding ground for cable broadband — and sluggish new household formation, that impact could be even worse.

On the telco side, Venkateshwar believes that fixed wireless offerings from Verizon and T-Mobile could have greater unit growth “than the entire cable industry” during the quarter. 

Charter Communications chief financial officer Jessica Fischer pointed to another potential pitfall for cable at the Credit Suisse Communications conference in June, telling the audience that about 60,000 to 70,000 broadband subscribers that had been part of the Federal Communications Commission’s Emergency Broadband Benefit program did not make the transition to the fed’s new broadband subsidy offering, the Affordable Connectivity Program. While Fischer said she believes broadband is a growth business and still expects Charter to add subscribers in Q2, it has caused analysts some pause. 

Venkateshwar, who had earlier predicted Charter would add about 100,000 broadband customers in Q2, now believes they will add none, adding that the gap between it and No 1 cable operator Comcast could be bigger than usual. 

In his note, Venkateshwar wrote that while Q2 is generally seasonal as students leave college and residents move to summer homes, “the slowdown being seen intra quarter goes beyond seasonality impacts.” 

“Charter talked down broadband sub growth for Q2 due to the impact of the rollover from old subsidy programs into new programs in late Q1, and the company’s consumer broadband net adds may tip into negative growth in the quarter,” Venkateshwar wrote. “This is difficult to explain without assuming continued structural impacts on gross adds due to competition as well as broader market saturation.”

The Barclays analyst expects Comcast to add about 74,000 broadband customers in the quarter (down from 354,000 last year), while Altice USA should lose about 20,000 high-speed internet subscribers in the period, compared to zero additions in the same period last year.

While telcos seem to have an advantage given their increased fiber deployment, Venkateshwar wrote that their efforts have been largely tactical, adding that there isn’t much visibility as to the long-term trends. And any big dropoff in cable broadband could lead operators to focus more heavily on wireless, which wouldn’t be good news for telcos. 

“Longer-term, it is tough to see how either industry ends up benefiting from the ongoing convergence in wireless/wireline offerings,” Venkateshwar wrote. “The end state of this process is likely to be potentially more M&A; however, with capital costs rising and a tougher regulatory environment, this may not be available as a solution for a while.” ▪️

Many Verizon Wireless customers have been infuriated this week after receiving notification from the telecom that their monthly bill for data will go up as much as $12 due to “rising operational costs.” 

Of course, price increases are part of the telecom business shell game, but they typically heat the proverbial waters around the ol‘ lobster by marginal increments — such as the $1.35 “economic adjustment” fee increase applied by Verizon this month to its postpaid customers for “administrative cost” increases. 

But consumers will definitely feel 12 bucks.

Verizon’s move follows a very similar price bump announced earlier this month by AT&T — single-line-of-service customers got a $6-a-month increase, while AT&T shared data customers saw a monthly surge of $12.

Verizon said its increase will take effect “no sooner” than August 2.

Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg raised the possibility of such a price bump during his company's first-quarter earnings report, suggesting something simply had to be done to keep up with inflationary pressure. (He didn't mention any adjustments to his own executive compensation, which exceeded $20 million last year.)

Thanks, Obama?

Blaming the current administration for inflation has been a go-to messaging point for far-right media outlets as they propagandize for the November midterm elections. And that agenda seems to be catching on, based on President Joe Biden’s currently low approval ratings. But increasingly, it appears that corporate greed might be a principal driver for the current upward price pressure we're all experiencing.

A study by the Economic Policy Institute published in April found that more than half of the overall increase in consumer pricing can be attributed to initiatives intended to drive “fatter corporate profits.” ▪️

The Federal Aviation Administration and key C-Band stakeholders AT&T and Verizon have agreed on a glide path to protecting sensitive aviation systems while boosting 5G service around "certain airports." AT&T and Verizon have also agreed to extend current interference mitigation efforts for another year.

The FCC cleared AT&T and Verizon to start rolling out service in the C-Band after they paid billions for the privilege, but the companies agreed to hold off back in November after the FCC put out a bulletin advising pilots, aircraft owners, manufacturers and others on the potential impact of 5G flexible use operations in the C-band on radio altimeters (RAs), which gauge how close a plane is to terrain.

AT&T and Verizon then agreed to mitigate possible interference around certain airports while pointing out that they had been authorized by the FCC to proceed without those.

Back in January, the companies had agreed to keep those mitigation strategies in place until July 5, 2022, but the FAA said they had agreed Friday to extend those voluntarily efforts for another year.

That agreement includes, in the meantime, requiring operators of "regional aircraft" whose altimeters are most susceptible to interference to retrofit them with new filters by the end of the year and identifying airports where wireless service can be enhanced with the smallest risk of disrupting flight plans.

“Through close coordination with the FAA over the last several months, we have developed a more tailored approach to controlling signal strength around runways that allows us to activate more towers and increase signal strength," said AT&T. "Though our FCC licenses allow us to fully deploy much-needed C-Band spectrum right now, we have chosen in good faith to implement these more tailored precautionary measures so that airlines have additional time to retrofit equipment. We appreciate the FAA’s support of this approach, and we will continue to work with the aviation community as we move toward the expiration of all such voluntary measures by next summer." ■

Cable stocks fell hard for the second time in three days, this time after Verizon Communications introduced a new pricing plan that offers its Fios broadband service for just $25 per month when coupled with its 5G wireless product. 

To some analysts, the new Verizon plan isn’t as much a ploy to gain Fios broadband customers as it appears to be a move to beat back competition from cable broadband, MoffettNathanson senior analyst Craig Moffett said in an email message. But he fears the price drop — less than half the $50 to $60 per month cable operators charge for broadband — will be bad news for all involved.

“It’s bad for everyone, most obviously Altice, but it’s also a bad sign for Verizon itself,” Moffett said of the Fios price drop in an email message. “I suspect it’s not so much to sell more Fios — Fios is doing fine — but instead to try to protect against wireless losses versus the cable bundle. It’s bad for cable because Verizon had been talking about RAISING Fios pricing as recently as May, but it’s also probably a sign that their wireless business is just continuing to get worse … and worse … and worse.”

Investors suspected the same. While Verizon was relatively flat — it closed at $48.34 each, down less than 1%, cable stocks fell hard on Thursday. Altice USA, the cable company with the most exposure to Fios, dropped the most: Its shares traded as low as $7.58 (down 17.6%, or $1.62 each) on Thursday, a new 52-week low, before rallying slightly to close at $7.88 per share, down 14.4%.

Other cable stocks weren’t hit as hard, but a combination of market forces — the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed Thursday down 740 points — and continued fears of a broadband slowdown put pressure on shares. Charter Communications finished the day at $415.35, down 7.5%, while Cable One closed at $1,171.52, down 5.6% and Comcast closed Thursday at $37.91, down 5.5% each. 

Cable wireless has been gaining steady ground over the past several quarters, with Comcast and Charter combining for more than 7 million customers. Altice USA has had less luck on the wireless side — Optimum Mobile added just 12,000 customers in Q1 and has a total of 198,000 subscribers as of March 31. But the company has been aggressive with discounts. It began offering unlimited data at $30 per line recently and has offered steep discounts on phones, and is in the midst of a massive rebranding effort.  

Also: Bears Take a Bite Out of Cable Stocks, Too 

There is little doubt that Verizon is going after cable companies with its newest wireless plan. According to the plan, new customers would get Verizon’s entry-level Fios 300 Megabit per second home service, basic 5G Home and LTE Home service, but only if they also subscribe to one of three ultimate mobile plans — 5G Play More, 5G Do More or 5G Get More mobile plans — which cost about $50 per month. 

“At a time when the cost of almost everything seems to be going up, Verizon is offering home internet at a price you'll love,” the company said in a press release. “With this new offering, the price is the price, guaranteed. So, ditch cable and switch to Verizon Home Internet with absolutely no regrets.”

While Verizon is urging consumers to ditch cable, it looks like the slowdown in broadband subscribers could start to pick up some speed in Q2. 

Also: Has Cable Broadband Hit the Wall? 

Charter chief financial officer Jessica Fischer, speaking Wednesday at the Credit Suisse Communications conference, said that a “small portion” of customers that had been part of the Federal Communications Commission’s Emergency Broadband Benefit program have not made the transition to its Affordable Connectivity Program. 

The EBB was launched last May, a $3.2 billion program established by Congress as part of a larger COVID-19 aid package. The EBB offered eligible households a subsidy of up to $50 per month ($75 per month on tribal lands) for broadband service and a one-time award of up to $100 for a computer or tablet. 

The ACP was launched in January, part of the Biden administration’s infrastructure package, offering a subsidy of up to $30 per month ($75 on tribal lands) for broadband service and $100 toward purchase of a laptop, desktop or tablet computer.  

But according to Fischer, not as many EBB customers made the transition to ACP, either because they failed to opt in to continue service or didn’t meet qualifications, particularly the one that required them to use the service each month. As a result, Fischer said that between 60,000 and 70,000 former EBB customers will be removed from Charter's subscriber rolls.

Fischer said Charter still expects to add broadband customers in Q2, even with fewer EBB customers, and that the outlook is that broadband is “absolutely still a growth business.”

Whether other cable companies will see the same effect from the ACP transition remains to be seen. But it is yet another uncertainty in what has been a year of uncertainties for the sector. ■ 

Fixed wireless access broadband could add more than 10 million subscribers in the next five years, driven by programs geared toward rural markets, according to a report by Wells Fargo telecom and media analysts Eric Luebchow and Steven Cahall.

In their report, the analysts predict that total broadband subscriber additions will accelerate to 4.5-to-5 million annually in 2023 and 2024, fueled mainly by FWA and fiber overbuilds. Over the next five years, Luebchow and Cahall predict FWA will rise from 7.1 million total subscribers at the end of 2021 to 17.6 million in 2027. That growth will come at the expense of cable operators, who the analysts predict will watch their market share erode quickly over the next few years. 

While fixed wireless has been around for awhile, Luebchow and Cahall expect competition to heat up significantly in the next three years as federally funded programs spur both wireless and fiber build outs for broadband. In their report, they estimate that FWA would capture 60% of net additions through 2024. Then momentum shifts to fiber overbuilders as new inventory comes on the market. 

“In total, we expect +50 [million] new premises to be connected with fiber through 2027 that will reach [two-thirds] of addressable locations,” Luebchow and Cahall wrote. “The competitive dynamics will make the net add story increasingly difficult for the cable players, as we project cable’s share of industry net adds will fall to ~30-35% in 2023 and beyond (vs. ~94% on average the past three years).”

Wells Fargo estimated that fiber builds passed about 50 million homes in 2021 and would more than double that pace to 102 million by 2027. 

While there has been some concern around the lack of a labor force to build fiber networks the analysts believe that is less of a factor with bigger telcos. 

Initially, Luebchow and Cahall see FWA as being the biggest disruptor, mainly because of its low price -- in some cases as much as 50% lower than wireline broadband offerings -- and adding about 5 million new customers in 2022 and 2023. Fiber will take hold in 2024 and beyond, about the time that many of the build out projects started in the past few years will be completed. While that includes some cable operators -- Altice USA plans to pass 6.5 million homes with fiber by 2025 and Charter and Comcast have extended their fiber reach by about 1 million homes per year over the past few years -- Luebchow and Cahall don’t believe it is enough to reverse the coming share shift.

“The net impact is cable players will have to face stiffer competition within their footprints, and they threaten to be crowded out of a secular story that only has room for [about] 3-5 million net adds per year,” they wrote, adding they expect cable’s share of broadband net additions to drop from 87% in 2021 to 30% to 40% by 2027. 

Cable has punched back by bundling broadband and wireless phone service -- Comcast and Charter are both pairing high-speed data service with mobile offerings at a discount. 

T-Mobile and Verizon Communications have been most aggressive on the fixed wireless front, adding 532,000 FWA customers in Q1, according to Leichtman Research Group.  But so far, most cable companies claim they haven’t seen much impact from the service, which for the most part has been concentrated on less populated areas and has targeted business customers like food trucks and construction trailers. 

At the MoffettNathanson Media & Communications Summit May 18, Comcast Cable CEO Dave Watson said so far, FWA hasn’t been a major competitive factor, but that the company is keeping a close eye on the service.

“It doesn't mean that it's not competitive. It doesn't mean that we're going to take it lightly. We're not,” Watson said at the conference, adding that fixed wireless has some issues around speed and latency. T-Mobile advertises FWA speeds between 33 Megabits per second and 182 Mbps, while Verizon FWA service can range from 300 Mbps to 1 gigabit per second. Watson added that two-thirds of Comcast broadband customers take 300 Mbps and higher.

“We're coming from a position of strength in regards to network performance and WiFi performance in the household and we're not going to stop,” Watson said at the conference. 

In their report, Luebchow and Cahall noted that FWA speeds are lower than cable, but they are more than adequate for the most popular applications like streaming video.

“FWA should not be dismissed and will be a viable competitive threat, particularly in rural areas and for customers that prioritize a lower price vs. higher speeds,” the analysts wrote.  ■ 

Verizon Communications reported 194,000 net additions for its new fixed wireless access service (FWA), driving the wireless company to its best home broadband quarter in a decade, with a total of 229,000 high-speed internet customer adds. 

“And this is not a one-off. You can see from the current broadband trends that the demand for fixed wireless is extremely high and growing,” Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg told equity analysts during the company's quarterly earnings call last week. 

The FWA growth exceeded analysts’ consensus forecasts and represented strong growth over the 78,000 FWA subscribers added in the fourth quarter of 2021, as well as the 17,000 tacked on in the first quarter of last year. 

Driven by proliferation of its C-band network, Verizon predicts it will be able to offer 5G FWA service to 50 million households and 14 million businesses by the end of 2025.

Led by Verizon and T-Mobile, the wireless industry is trying to claw back home broadband market share amassed over the last decade by cable companies, which now control around 70% of the U.S. high-speed internet market. 

Vestberg, though, said Verizon experienced “record low levels of churn” for its legacy Fios wireline broadband products, which added 35,000 customer net additions in Q1.

Meanwhile, Verizon's Fios TV business continues to whittle away, losing another 78,000 customers from January to March. 

Overall, Verizon reported total revenue of $33.6 billion in the first quarter, up 2.1% year over year. ▪️

With the start of the first-quarter earnings season about 10 days away, J.P. Morgan media and telecom analyst Phil Cusick expects total broadband customer additions to continue to slow, but said a boost from some fixed wireless access providers will make what could have been a really bad quarter a little better.

Comcast is expected to kick off the 2022 earnings season on April 28,  when it reports Q1 results, followed by Charter Communications on April 29.  

In a research note, Cusick estimated total broadband additions of about 674,000 in Q1, a 32% decline from the prior year. But the analyst noted it could have been worse -- his Q1 estimates include 274,000 fixed wireless access (FWA) additions from T-Mobile. Without those FWA customers, total broadband additions would be down 56% in the period. 

Cusick blamed the overall broadband slowdown on sluggish cable growth, weak housing growth (moves are down 17% for the year, according to U.S. Postal Service data), and the loss of about 5 million consumers with access via the Keep Americans Connected COVID-19 program since 2020.  

Cable operators will continue to see sluggish broadband growth in Q1. Cusick estimates that total cable broadband additions will fall 51% to 445,000 in the period from 910,000 in Q1 2021. For the full year, he expects cable operators to add about 1.78 million broadband customers, down from 2.64 million additions in 2021.

Overall, Cusick expects total broadband additions of 2.94 million, a 4% decrease from 3.07 million additions in 2021. Fixed wireless is expected to add about 1.77 million new customers in 2022, down from 2.55 million in the prior year.

But Cusick still expects cable to attract about 66% of new broadband additions -- FWA is in second place with 39% -- mainly because in many areas, cable is the best choice for reliable high-speed connection.

Comcast and Charter are expected to add about 180,000 residential broadband subscribers each, compared to the 448,000 and 334,000 broadband customers, respectively, they added in Q1 2021. 

Analyst: No Sign of a Cable Slump

In his research note, Cusick explained that he hasn’t taken down his overall cable broadband estimates -- unlike some of his colleagues -- not because he believes cable MSOs will do better, but because he hasn’t seen any evidence they will do much worse. 

“Typical seasonality would be for 1Q to be stronger, and most cable commentary in 4Q was that the business improved through 4Q until omicron hit,” Cusick wrote “[W]ith no useful commentary from the companies, aside from consistently denying that FWA is impacting, we prefer to leave our estimates unchanged than reflexively lower the bar due to bullish FWA commentary from [T-Mobile and Verizon].”

Low housing moves and increased pricing will also most likely help boost cable margins, the analyst continued, adding that Charter repurchased about $3.7 billion of its shares during Q1, usually an indication of strong cash-flow growth despite slower subscriber additions. 

For other operators, Cusick sees flat broadband subscriber adds at Altice USA in Q1, and about 11,000 additions at Cable One.

On the telco side, Cusick predicted AT&T would lose about 10,000 broadband customers (15,000 IP additions offset by 25,000 digital subscriber line losses). Verizon Communications should add about 45,000 consumer wireline broadband subscribers (65,000 Fios Internet additions offset by 20,000 DSL losses), he said. Frontier Communications, which emerged from bankruptcy last year and has an aggressive fiber buildout strategy underway, should be well-positioned for growth, according to Cusick. The analyst predicted that Frontier will add 15,000 broadband customers in Q1 (46,000 fiber adds offset by 32,000 DSL losses).

Legacy video losses are expected to be about 1.5 million in Q1, down from 1.67 million in the prior year, but the improvement is more due to waning satellite TV losses. Cusick expects DirecTV/Dish to shed a collective 575,000 customers in Q1 (compared to losses of 750,000 in Q1 2021), while he predicts cable operators to lose 872,000 video subscribers, 5% worse than the prior year. 

Comcast’s video losses are expected to rise to 435,000 from 404,000 in the prior year, mainly because of a price increase that took effect in January. Charter’s video losses are expected to be slightly better in the quarter -- 150,000 compared to 156,000 in Q1 2021 -- reflecting slowing move activity. For the full year, legacy video losses are expected to be 5.3 million, better than the 5.8 million shed in 2021. 

Virtual multichannel video programming distributors (vMVPDs) such as Hulu Plus Live TV, YouTube TV and Sling TV are expected to add about 23,000 customers in Q1 (better than a loss of 92,000 subscribers in Q1 2021). For the year, vMVPDs should add about 1.4 million video customers, about even with the prior year. ▪️

With practically every telecom and cable company moving to step up their fiber buildout plans over the next few years, MoffettNathanson senior analyst Craig Moffett wondered last Friday if the recent acceleration in construction was indeed too much, and whether telcos and cable companies will be able to justify the cost.

There is no question that broadband subscriber growth is slowing down, and that the remedy for both telco and cable providers appears to be investing more in building out and expanding their fiber reach. It makes sense in that the only way left for most operators to grow broadband is to either expand their footprint to homes that don't currently receive service, and/or boost new home growth. Since providers have no control over the latter, the former has been a big focus. 

According to Moffett‘s report, over the past 20 years about 30% of the U.S. population has been overbuilt by fiber networks. But that coverage is expected to rise to 60% in the next five years and possibly 80% by 2033, as nearly every telco and cable operator has put forth plans to build new or expand existing networks. Based on announcements of fiber-to-the-home projects, Moffett estimated, telcos will add nearly 40 million new fiber passings between 2020 and 2025 for overbuilds alone. 

“If fully completed, the additions would amount to an additional 25% of housing units (assuming 1% growth in total housing units per year), nearly doubling the current overbuilt cable footprint,” Moffett wrote.

Buildouts Come with Risks

But Moffett warned that the success of those projects is reliant upon buildout costs remaining low, penetration rates and average revenue per user (ARPU) numbers staying high and capital to fund the projects being easily available and cheap. 

“Our conclusion is that there is simply too much enthusiasm for too many overbuilds,” Moffett wrote. “Some, it seems clear, will end in disappointment (or worse).”

Though buildout costs are relatively low now, Moffett noted that they probably won’t be as demand increases. Further pressuring companies is a shortage of available labor to build the networks that is only going to get worse as the number of projects increases.   

Also figuring importantly into the overall cost of a fiber build is whether it will be aerial or underground, and the housing density of the area it will ultimately serve. Moffett pointed to industry benchmarks that put the average cost of building aerial plant at about $25,000 per mile, with buried fiber costing about twice that. But that depends on a relatively large number of homes per mile, and the numbers can vary widely.

For example, Verizon Communications’ fiber network passes about 849.2 homes per mile, while Windstream passes about 126.4 homes per mile. The national average is about 37.3 homes per mile, but that too falls off substantially after the larger cities are taken out of the mix. According to Census data, the densest 10% of housing units are in areas where the homes number 10,100 homes per mile. The numbers fall sharply in the second 10% — 3,756 homes per mile and the last 10%, just 4 homes per mile.

Telcos tend to build fiber in more dense areas than their overall footprint. According to Moffett, based on Federal Communications Commission broadband deployment data, AT&T, Verizon, Frontier Communications, Lumen Technologies, Apollo, Ziply, Cincinnati Bell, Shenandoah Communications, and Windstream cover land areas averaging about 134 homes per square mile. Their fiber footprints average around 534 housing units per square mile.

Geography Matters

And then there is the geographical makeup of the area a company is building out. According to Moffett, the rockier the terrain, the costlier, and much of the less dense areas that are a key target of the federal rural broadband initiative are pretty rocky. He pointed to two builds — one in a particularly rural, particularly rocky area that cost $75,000 per mile to bury fiber. Moffett also cited a Communications Consulting Group study about the feasibility of building a municipal broadband network in Falmouth, Massachusetts, that said that hitting rock during construction could quadruple the cost per foot of building the network.  

How much providers will charge for service also is going to be a function of the build costs and expected penetration rates. Moffett estimated that a provider that wants to charge $50 per month for fiber broadband and anticipates a 40% penetration rate, needs to keep costs around $1,500 per home passed.  

In the end, whether telcos and cable operators continue their respective fiber buildout binges will depend on demand and how much customers are willing to pay. Despite the slowdown in broadband subscriber growth over the past few quarters, rural areas, where choices are few or nonexistent, appear to be hungry for higher-speed service. The economics of getting them that service will just have to work themselves out. ■

If you missed Verizon’s investors day briefing last week because it’s not your industry, you would be forgiven for overlooking one of the potentially most consequential announcements in recent times affecting streaming video and other direct-to-consumer services. 

That’s because Verizon announced Plus Play (styled by the Verizon marketing department as “+play”), a packaging service that will feature a single sign-on and billing for not just multiple streaming video services but, also several other kinds of direct-to-consumer offerings. PlusPlay also could be a mortal blow for the battered cable TV business, while fixing some of DTC’s most intractable and annoying customer headaches. 

The initial Plus Play testing will include Netflix, Disney’s three streaming services, Discovery Plus, three A+E Networks niche networks, three more from AMC Plus, and TelevisaUnivision’s Spanish-language Vix Plus. The video networks will sit next to some decidedly different subscription options, including sports-news site The Athletic, Peloton’s exercise programming, Live Nation’s Veeps live-music online platform, weight-management service WW International, meditation service Calm, and language-learning app Duolingo.

“I think the most succinct way to describe it is that it's a digital store for your subscriptions,” Verizon Chief Revenue Officer Frank Boulben told me. “What we are observing in the marketplace is that consumers are having more and more digital subscriptions, whether it's for video, audio, music, gaming, lifestyle, wellness, etc. And it's becoming a real pain point for those customers to keep track of which services they are subscribed to on which platform with which payment mean which login and password.”

The service is still in alpha mode, Boulben said, launching by the end of March for testing with a small pool of customers. The plan is to continue curating a list of “dozens and dozens of services” ahead of a full Plus Play launch by year’s end.  

“We have a lot of service providers, starting with the (video) programmers, that are reaching out to us as they are looking for an efficient direct-to-consumer distribution platform, because most digital service providers haven't got the marketing or distribution clout to reach a large customer base,” Boulben said. “And that's really the gist of the Plus Play strategy. It's to be that neutral market place that provides convenience and choice for consumers on one side, and on the other side provides unparalleled reach and marketing ability for the service provider.”

Marketing hype aside, Boulben can point to previous successes pushing Apple Music, then Disney Plus, Discovery Plus and the Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass video game services as add-ons or premiums for wireless service. 

“Those partners have realized that we are very good at acquiring active subscribers,” Boulben said. “In particular, we have a very high conversion rate from promotion to paid subscribers, which is a business challenge for them. And obviously, we are very good at managing the lifecycle of customers. It allows our partners to focus really on the product experience or the content experience.”

Startups such as Paket have created go-to apps that bring together in one place all the sign-ons, billing and other customer minutia that streaming video customers need for all their video services. Amazon has its Channels program, as well, but unlike Paket, isn’t exactly Switzerland, given its own streaming services and tight control over customer data.

Because of that, HBO Max last summer walked away from 5 million subscribers on Amazon, a gutsy call that paid off in Q4 with strong subscriber growth that suggests most of those customers followed it to a more direct relationship. 

But owning all the data and relationship can be hard for many companies, especially as customers add more and more subscriptions in the direct-to-consumer era. 

Boulben argues that Verizon’s Plus Play partners are willing to trade some of the customer relationship in exchange for Verizon’s huge reach, existing sales/upsell teams, and lower acquisition and retention costs. Verizon has the biggest customer base of the Big Three wireless carriers, some 50 million households with 150 million individual customers, an enticing target for any DTC company, in video or elsewhere.

Asked how Verizon can avoid a replay of HBO Max’s Amazon walk away, Boulben said “we have the commercial relationship,” but the streaming service has “100-percent ownership of the usage data.’ The streaming service is “the only party knowing whether you are using the service on the daily basis, how much you are using it, and what you are watching. Verizon doesn’t know any of that.” 

The subscription service also gets its customer’s log-in and email address, so it can do direct marketing to its customers. 

Boulben declined to specify Verizon’s revenue share (estimates of Amazon’s Channels suggest it brings in a whopping $4 billion a year). For Verizon, the revenue share will vary from deal to deal, category to category. 

“What I can tell you, on the basis of our existing relationships, it is perceived as fair by the providers,” Boulben said. “Because what we bring in exchange, it's an acquisition machine, and also a marketing machine for the lifecycle management of customers.”

As Boulben rather slyly mentioned, having a sense of getting value for money “is not the case, as you know, with all marketplaces currently in the market.” 

The real potential here could be longer term, though. Can Verizon become a substantive competitor for the most lucrative piece of business remaining for the cable industry: providing high-speed broadband connectivity to the home? 

Plus Play could become an adoption driver for what’s oxymoronically called fixed wireless, where a 5G-enabled base station provides bandwidth and Internet connectivity to all kinds of devices in a home, including smart TVs, other smart devices, phones, tablets, and computers. 

Verizon said Thursday that it already can provide fixed-wireless access to 30 million households, which combined with Verizon’s 16 million FiOS customers makes it one of the three largest U.S. “broadband” providers.  

The Verizon approach contrasts sharply with traditional cable, however, with “no contract, no bundle, taxes and fees are included,” Boulben said. 

“It's self setup, no need for an appointment,” Boulben continued. “The equipment is included. And if you happen to be a mobile subscriber on Verizon, it's only $25 per month. So that's a very attractive proposition. That's going to be the next generation of home broadband and home entertainment. So long live the traditional cable bundle.”

Boulben quickly clarified that Verizon’s approach is actually not the traditional cable bundle, because it doesn’t lump connectivity and content together. The future will bifurcate the two, he predicted, with connectivity on one side, and the customer choosing exactly the content they want.

For now, choosing those services is a teeth-gritting a la carte process, but Boulben said that probably won’t be the case forever. 

“Maybe in the future, it will make sense to group (services) in packages,” Boulben said. “I'm not using the word ‘bundle,’ but in packages of services. If we do that, that will be a very different type of bundle, because it will not bundle content and connectivity.”

Disney, of course, already  has its bundle of Disney Plus, ESPN Plus and Hulu, and once Discovery and WarnerMedia merge, they plan to offer a bundle of HBO Max, Discovery Plus, and the soon-to-launch CNN Plus. 

“What we haven’t seen yet is the bundle across companies, right,” Boulben said. “Maybe that will go.” 

The PlusPlay initiative marks a dramatic shift for Verizon, which half a decade ago spent billions buying aging Internet properties such as Yahoo, Huffington Post and Tumblr, and launching its own mobile-video service, Go90. None of those initiatives went well. 

It’s also probably still too early to expect fixed wireless to be a big thing, given the grinding process of rolling out 5G nationally. One recent article called the mobile technology “a $100 billion whiff so far,” thanks to conspiracy crackpots, airline opposition, branding missteps, and slow customer adoption. 

But Verizon and its competitors are rapidly adding more mid-band spectrum, which provides good speed and carrying capacity for high-quality video and dozens of devices, without the interference issues 5G’s fastest flavors face in trying to penetrate buildings and other obstacles.  

As that Goldilocks spectrum becomes more widely deployed, new business models will shoulder forward to take advantage. PlusPlay could be one, and almost certainly will soon spawn copycat offerings from AT&T and T-Mobile. 

That may be inevitable if PlusPlay can find its footing in the market, but Boulben said, “certainly we have a head start.” 

Telcos like T-Mobile and Verizon could double their fixed wireless subscriber additions in 2023, according to Wells Fargo Securities media analyst Steven Cahall, who predicts that as competition between cable and telco service providers to extend their broadband reach into more rural markets heats up, capital intensity will rise too.

T-Mobile and Verizon have made the most headway on the 5G fixed wireless front, adding about 300,000 locations combined in Q4 2021. As mid-band network coverage improves, 5G fixed wireless offerings from those two companies are expected to scale and Cahall expects their 2022 estimated net additions of 1 million to 1.5 million to double to 2 million to 3 million in 2023.

“While T-Mobile has successfully been winning share in urban and suburban areas to date, we think the rural area remains the most feasible for broader fixed wireless adoption, with excess network capacity and more favorable competitive dynamics,” Cahall wrote.

Also: Verizon Recasts Jim Carrey as the Cable Guy for Super Bowl Fixed Wireless Ad 

But reaching those rural areas will cost money, and both sides seem to be willing to pony up whatever is necessary.   

In his research note, Cahall wrote that T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T have already boosted spending on fiber and fixed wireless this year -- he estimated telcos will spend about $9 billion to connect 8 million new subscribers to fiber in 2022 and will add 9 million to 10 million new premises per year. AT&T, he wrote, appears positioned to add about 3.5 million new fiber locations in 2022 (up from 2.6 million in 2021). 

Also: Verizon Expands Fios and 5G FWA Promo to Include the Disney Bundle 

For cable operators, capital intensity (capital expenditures as a percentage of sales), on the downward trend over the past few years as network buildout projects have been completed, will be on the way up beginning in 2022. Cahall estimates that Altice USA will see the biggest jump in capital intensity (from 12.8% in 2021 to 17.8% in 2022), followed by Charter (from 14.4% in 2021 to 16% in 2022) and Comcast (from 10.8% in 2021 to 11% in 2022).

Cable operators are expected to continue to deploy fiber, extending their reach deeper into rural markets. But Cahall added that they may have to tick up spending as telcos continue to encroach on the space and gain share, particularly through 5G fixed wireless broadband. 

Also: Analyst Says Telcos Better Positioned to Chip Away at Cable’s Broadband Lead 

“[W]e think connectivity markets have the makings of an arms race, so availability and speed improvements from cable/fiber/5G will lead to more higher-speed use cases (e.g. 8K video) that begets more connectivity competition that begets more capex,” Cahall wrote. “We thus think investors should not assume any capex holidays for Cable (as % of sales).”

Cahall sees fiber networks serving the heaviest broadband users -- those that work/school from home, are heavy streaming video users and/or gamers -- in rural markets. Lighter broadband users would gravitate to lower cost, lower speed fixed wireless offerings, he wrote.  

Also: Fixed and Dilated

Those lighter broadband users also tend to be older, tend to be more likely to subscribe to traditional pay TV and don't require ultra-high speeds for their data. Cahall pointed to Social Security Administration data that showed there are about 60 million U.S. residents over the age of 65, likely representing about 40 million homes that over-index on linear pay TV and under-index on heavy data download and upload requirements. 

“As fixed wireless technology improves, we think that base of lower data consumption homes will become ripe customers for 5G with a wireless phone plan bundle,” Cahall wrote. “These cohorts may not seem like the obvious ‘early adopter’ set, but if 5G is inferior to fiber and DOCSIS 4.0 then it's exactly the sort of homes telco's 5G proponents like Verizon and T-Mobile may target. This is yet another medium-term risk to cable net adds and earnings.”

While most of the industry is bracing for a slowdown in cable broadband subscriber additions, Cahall estimated that cable operators should see their high-speed data customer growth moderate from an average of 4.6% between 2017 and 2019 to 2.6% between 2020 and 2025. At the same time, he predicted fiber and wireless broadband customer growth would increase by 13.9% and 19% from 2020 to 2025. As a result, cable broadband market share should drop from 65% in 2020 to 63% in 2025, while fiber would grow from 12% to 21% and wireless would more than double from 5% to 11% in the same time period. 

“In short, the threat of fiber/fixed wireless is real, and its impact should only intensify as time advances,” Cahall wrote. ■

Verizon is turning to a middling mid-1990s Jim Carrey comedy movie to spark sales of its hot new fixed wireless product, commissioning the actor to reanimate "Cable Guy" for a Super Bowl ad.

The 15-second spot, at the 9:16 mark of the Verizon video below showcasing the wireless company's numerous Super Bowl-related marketing activities this coming Sunday, reveals a leery woman approaching her front door after a knock from a man who identifies himself simply as, "cable guy!"

"Your internet will never be the same," said Diego Scotti, executive VP and chief marketing officer at Verizon, introducing the spot on LinkedIn Monday. 

Verizon reported an impressive 78,000 new signups of its new fixed wireless access (FWA) service in Q4, upping the customer base for the fledgling service to 228,000.

Verizon and T-Mobile are aggressively marketing FWA products in an effort to pull back some of cable's high-speed internet market share in the U.S., which currently stands at around 70%. 

Verizon said it spent $80 million upgrading its network in and around Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla., the site of last year's Super Bowl. It's unclear how much the wireless giant will spend in and around SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles on Sunday. Prices for a 30-second spot on NBC are reportedly going for $6 million, up 9% over the 2021 game. 

As for The Cable Guy, it was directed by Ben Stiller and starred Matthew Broderick as a heart-broken young man whose problems are further compounded when he gets a tech visit from his cable company. The movie scored an aggregated 53% among critics and grossed just over $100 million at the global box office. ■

Verizon has included a popular promotion for its Fios wireline and 5G Home Internet FWA service to now include the Disney Bundle. 

Starting on February 11, new customers for these home broadband services will get up to12 free months of the Disney Bundle, which includes Disney Plus, Hulu and ESPN Plus. 

Verizon previously supported an "on us" promotion that provided new home broadband users with subsidized Disney Plus. 

Also read: T-Mobile Says Majority of Customers for Its Now 'Mainstream' Fixed Wireless Service Are Coming From Cable

Verizon added 78,000 fixed wireless access customers in the fourth quarter and now has 228,000, second only to T-Mobile. 

For its part, T-Mobile, which provides its unlimited wireless customers Netflix and Apple TV Plus at no cost, was asked about the value of such promotions during its fourth-quarter call on Wednesday. 

"When you look at all of that put together, we love how that's working," said Jon Freier, president of T-Mobile consumer group. ■

Back in 2008, Verizon Fios TV was pay TV's hottest property, growing by 303,000 customers in the fourth quarter of that year. 

Back and those days, our linear-focused LCD TV sets were filled with Transformers-themed commercials starring blockbuster film maven Michael Bay, telling us how awesome this new pay TV alternative to cable and satellite was. 

These days? With Verizon's focus clearly directed toward 5G wireless and fiber connectivity, Fios TV isn't as awesome. Verizon reported the loss of another 69,000 Fios TV customers in the fourth quarter, with its base slipping to around 3.645 million customers.

Fios TV is now the sixth largest pay TV platform in the U.S., trailing Comcast's Xfinity TV, Charter's Spectrum TV, DirecTV and Dish Network, as well as virtual MVPD's Hulu + Live TV and YouTube TV.

Like AT&T, Verizon also divested its media portfolio, ditching to private equity company Apollo Management last year for $5 billion.

For its part, Verizon often cross-sells third-party video products, including YouTube TV and the Disney Bundle, prioritizing them over the traditional Fios linear video platform, trying to keep sales moving for its fiber-based, Fios-branded wireline broadband products.

Verizon added 51,000 internet customers during the fourth quarter and 339,000 for the full 2021 campaign. Fios revenue was up 5.6% year over year to $2.9 billion in the fourth quarter.

Calling 2021 a "transformational" year during which it fulfilled the objectives laid out three years ago when he joined the company as CEO, Hans Vestberg told investors, "As we move into 2022, we have the necessary assets to realize our strategy that we laid out in 2019. We are laser focused on executing our 5G strategy and providing value to our customers, shareholders, employees, and society, as 2022 will be the most exciting year yet for Verizon."

President Joe Biden said during his press conference Wednesday (January 19) that his administration “doesn’t deal with 5G,” by which he appeared to mean indirectly, since he has also signaled the administration has been a key player in a key 5G issue.

The president was asked what he has done to restore the public’s faith in the competence of his administration on issues including 5G and the potential that the rollout of the technology by AT&T and Verizon in C-band spectrum adjacent to aviation systems could cause harmful interference to radio altimeters that planes use in bad-weather takeoffs and landings.

Biden said as to “whether or not there is competence in dealing with 5G,” the fact was that the issue was between two “private enterprises” — one promoting 5G in the wireless industry and the airlines — though he conceded both are regulated by the government.

Also: Biden: Cable Looks Like It‘s ’Going South‘

He said his role was to push as hard as he could for a delay in the 5G rollout that was requested by the airlines so they could “modernize.” Wireless carriers have said the airlines have already had a couple of years to do so.

But as to his administration not dealing with 5G, Biden has issued statements coinciding with the two voluntary rollout delays by Verizon and AT&T, as well as their decision to provide airport buffer zones, at least for the time being.

In the president’s January 18 statement, issued after the agreement on the buffer zones, the administration for all appearances seemed definitely to be dealing with the issue.

“My team has been engaging nonstop with the wireless carriers, airlines, and aviation equipment manufacturers to chart a path forward for 5G deployment and aviation to safely coexist,” he said, “and, at my direction, they will continue to do so until we close the remaining gap and reach a permanent, workable solution around these key airports.”

The president said “he gets” that anything that happens that is consequential is supposed to be government’s responsibility. ■