Philo, a low-cost virtual MVPD that focuses on entertainment programming, said it now has more than 800,000 subscribers.
CEO Andrew McCollum revealed the new total during a keynote conversation at the Stream TV Show on Monday. The new subscriber count is up from the 750,000 total that Philo announced in August.
Philo charges $20/month for a package of more than 60 channels. McCollum said that he doesn’t anticipate Philo will add any channels in the near future that will require the service to raise rates. He also said that Philo focuses on efficiently running its business to avoid big operational costs causing price increases.
“I can’t say that the price of Philo will never go up. But we definitely put a lot of effort into keeping it as low as we can,” McCollum said.
RELATED: Deeper Dive—How YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV and others stack up after Q2
Philo has long been among the least expensive options for livestreaming TV but T-Mobile recently announced TVision Vibe, a $10/month service that focuses on entertainment networks from programmers like AMC, Discovery and ViacomCBS.
McCollum commended T-Mobile’s move to split news and sports from entertainment channels, and he said that if Philo does eventually offer sports and news, it too would likely sell them in a separate package. He did note though that TVision Vibe has already run into some pushback from programmers and that the service lacks some features like cloud DVR that Philo offers.
“Maybe the approach they took wasn't calculated exactly right but in spirit I think the concept makes sense,” McCollum said.
Philo is currently mostly focused on the U.S. and McCollum said he said the service still has a lot of room to grow here. However, Philo is thinking about how to expand globally and he said it’s more likely than not that the service will go that direction in the near future.