Verizon’s IPTV Customers At 118K By Q3; Contents Cost Finally Factoring In
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,
Verizon is adding new customers to it's fold and trying to match the Triple or Quadruple play value propositions of the Cable operators.
The fact that by offering the same set of services that are available to the consumer the only way the Verizon's of the world can compete will be on price.
The street has already priced this reality into the stock, as any investment made by the telco's in providig TV service through FTTH is a necessity to survive rather than a paradigm shift.
Those who are looking at the Stock should contemplate wether the big gamble will lead to new sets of applications and services that will take advantage of this huge capital investment in the next 15 years.
Will people want an EBay auction which is video based instead of still images and text?
Thats the kind of service that will need higher bandwidth's. Just giving movies does not create a paradigm shift for the Verizon's of the world.