Verizon has reported some data for its IPTV services in its Q3 earnings call last week, and Multichannel picks it up. It says it has more than doubled the number of its FiOS TV customers in Q3—63K subscribers were added, bringing the total to 118K as of Sept. 30. Verizon said it’s on track to hit 175K TV subscribers by year-end.
With this, for the first time, Verizon says its content acquisition costs are becoming significant enough to at least get a mention in earnings…“We really hadn’t been doing much on content cost because it was so early on, so the third quarter had a pretty decent accrual to start the content cost,” CFO Doreen Toben said in Q3 call.
As for how much it is paying, Albert Lin, a telecom analyst at American Technology Research, said that at this early stage, Verizon is paying a relative premium for TV programming, compared with large cable operators, though he didn’t have a guess how much more it is shelling out. Verizon has told analysts that it is able to negotiate rates on a par with direct-broadcast satellite providers, who also typically pay more in license fees than cable companies.
At the end of Q3, Verizon said, FiOS TV was available to 1.2 million homes in seven states.
Related: Verizon’s Fios: $18 Billion Investment, But How Much Is That Per Customer?