Verizon announced the record addition of 393,000 fixed wireless access customers in the first quarter, with the company continuing to expand its FWA business as its only real rival in the sector, T-Mobile, may have bumped its head a bit on a ceiling of capacity issues.
Verizon, which ended 2022 with 1.452 million fixed wireless home internet customers, added 379,000 in Q4. (You can read Verizons' full Q1 earnings release here.)
Factoring in 67,000 Fios Internet customer additions (vs. 60,000 in the same period of 2022), Verizon added 437,000 high-speed internet users in the first quarter.
Verizon also lost 76,000 Fios linear pay TV customers in the first quarter vs. 78,000 year over year, dwindling its base to just 3.16 million remaining subscribers.
While FWA is a nice little business that's currently carving a bit of wireline broadband market share from cable, Verizon, of course, is actually sized up by equity analysts based on the strength of its wireless business. And based on his report Tuesday morning, Craig Moffett wasn't all that impressed:
"Like AT&T a week ago, Verizon today reported results that speak to this challenging backdrop," Moffett wrote. "Subscriber growth metrics remain weak, with a shocking 478K retail phone subscriber loss across post-paid and pre-paid combined. Promotionality is increasingly weighing on ARPU. Service revenue growth is soft. Profitability is meh. Business wireline is in free fall. Absent the double-edged sword of growing wholesale wireless revenue as cable wireless takes market share, there are no growth stories here."
T-Mobile reports earnings on Thursday, as does Comcast. Charter Communications reports on Friday.
