Verizon lost 68,000 Fios TV customers in the third quarter, finishing the three-month period ending Sept. 30 with only 3.6 million remaining linear pay TV users.
Meanwhile, Fios Internet net adds came in at 98,000 compared to 139,000 in Q3 of 2020, with the Fios Internet base now standing at 6.49 million customers.
However, for those tracking the wireline telecom business, these are probably no longer the most important data points.
Verizon, for the first time, disclosed its fixed wireless metrics, revealing that it has 150,000 "fixed wireless access" (FWA) customers, having added 55,000 net adds in the third quarter alone.
That may not seem like much, but FWA customers accounted for around 43% of total Verizon broadband net additions in Q3, which also factored in the loss of DSL users.
Was this the biggest growth quarter ever for Verizon's three-year-old fixed-wireless business? The company didn't say.
"Much of our long-term growth is in fixed wireless access and mobile edge compute," Verizon Chairman and CEO Hans Vestberg told Wall Street analysts.
"We are on track to meet our fixed wireless access household coverage targets with an expected 15 million homes passed by the end of the year between 4G and 5G. To date, 5G Home is in 57 markets and the 4G LTE Home in over 200 markets across all 50 states," Vestberg added.
