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FiOS TV: Data Points
December 12, 2008
Verizon has deployed somewhere around 4.8 million FiOS TV set-top boxes so far, according to my back-of-the-envelope calculations.
Benigno Gonzalez, executive director of FiOS products, said the telco's TV subscribers lease an average of three set-tops per household. Verizon 
reported 1.6 million FiOS TV subscribers as of Sept. 30. Hence, 4.8 million set-tops.
So far, those are all from Motorola, though the telco continues to evaluate new suppliers on this front, according to Gonzalez, who also described Verizon's plans to widely roll out VoIP service to FiOS customers in early 2009.
Other data points Gonzalez shared:
* About two-thirds of FiOS TV subs have at least one HD box. (Verizon, you may remember, encountered a shortage of HD boxes back at the turn of the New Year.) That decisively beats the national average: 23.3% of all U.S. television households had an HDTV as of the end of November, according to Nielsen this week.
* A little more than half have a DVR. That compares with DVR penetration of 27% among all TV households, according to Leichtman Research Group.
* Close to 25% are taking the Home Media DVR, which provides multiroom DVR features (to other non-DVR set-tops in the home) and access to PC-based photos and music on the TV. The multiroom DVR is $19.99 per month, four bucks more than the regular HD DVR.
* After Verizon upgraded the FiOS Interactive Media Guide, which among other things made searching VOD titles easier, the telco saw a 25% uptick in movie purchases. Gonzalez said that IMG upgrade began in Q2 and finished in Q3.
Posted by Todd Spangler on December 12, 2008 | Comments (0)
