Verizon: 303,000 FiOS TV adds in Q4

Verizon Communications wowed the TV service provider sector today with its Q4 earnings report, which showed a net gain of 303,000 FiOS TV subscribers during the quarter. That gain, the telco's largest-ever quarterly growth in TV customers and well above the 226,000 additions it posted in the fourth quarter of 2007, allowed Verizon to close out 2008 with a total of about 1.9 million TV customers. That figure puts Verizon among the worldwide leaders in telco TV.

Verizon announced just yesterday that it had wired its 1 millionth apartment building with FiOS service, and Verizon CFO Doreen Toben noted that the company added 282,000 net FiOS Internet customers during the fourth quarter. That figure too was a quarterly best, but Toben put more of the focus on FiOS TV, noting that the TV services had achieved a 21 percent sales penetration rate among its potential customer base. She said FiOS TV is now available to a total potential customer base of 9.2 million premises, an increase of 57 percent over the service's reach at the end of 2007.

Toben added that consumer broadband and video revenues totaled $1.2 billion in the fourth quarter, and that broadband and TV products now account for more than 31 percent of consumer average revenue per user in the telco's legacy markets. ARPU among FiOS customers stands at more than $133 per month.

For more:
- Here's Verizon Q4 earnings press release

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