Verizon Communications said Tuesday that it added 375,000 fixed wireless access customers in the fourth quarter.
With the additions — which narrowly missed Wall Street analysts’ consensus hopes — Verizon more than doubled its FWA base in 2023, reaching 3.06 million customers. (Verizon's Q4 earnings release is available here.)
Of its FWA additions in Q4, 231,000 of them were for the consumer market. Adding 53,000 Fios Internet net additions and subtracting 15,000 legacy DSL subscribers, Verizon added 269,000 home broadband customers in Q4.
The company ended the year with just over 9 million home broadband users, a nearly 15% expansion vs. 2022.
In other parts of Verizon’s business, the company lost 64,000 Fios linear pay TV users, bringing its base to a hair above 3 million customers.
In the company’s core business, consumer wireless, net post-paid additions were better than expected at 449,000. That was Verizon’s best subscriber performance in more than a year.
However, none of the aforementioned subscriber expansion has translated into revenue growth for the company.
Verizon reported virtually flat operating revenue of $35.1 billion (up 0.3%) in Q4. Full-year revenue of $134 billion was down 2.1%.
"For any subscription-based business, the conversation has to begin with subscriptions," noted equity analyst Craig Moffett in a letter to shareholders Tuesday morning. "So, Verizon’s improvement on that score is unquestionably good news. Unfortunately, the picture gets a bit murkier after that. Their post-paid ARPU isn’t growing (at least, not yet). Wireline continues to shrink. Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) isn’t showing the kind of lift-off one might have expected."
