AT&T had 231,000 U-verse TV subscribers at the end of 2007 and predicted it will hit another 1 million subscribers by year’s end. Its competitor, Verizon Communications, said it topped 1 million FiOS TV subscribers in the first few weeks of 2008.
In the fourth quarter of 2007, Verizon added a net of 226,000 new FiOS TV customers totaling 943,000 by year-end. The company said it added its one millionth FiOS TV customer earlier this month, up from 717,000 at the end of September.
Verizon was marketing FiOS TV to 5.9 million homes in parts of 13 states by the close of last year, with penetration for the service averaging 16 percent across all markets. With satellite TV customers signed up via its partnership with DIRECTV, Verizon counted more than 1.8 million video customers.
AT&T said its U-verse TV weekly install rate in mid-December was approximately 12,000, beating a year-end target of 10,000 per week. Last month, AT&T announced it would extend its U-verse buildout to include nine Southeast states with plans to reach 30 million living units in 22 states by the end of 2010.
However, Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett, in a research note last week, said Verizon’s FiOS results may be “a mild disappointment” to investors.
“The service is clearly attracting more customers, but the rate of acceleration from the third quarter in both video and broadband is modest — FiOS broadband net additions increased 7 percent sequentially; FiOS video subscribers increased 12 percent sequentially from 202K to 226K,” he wrote.
