Verizon DSL giving way to FiOS

Verizon Communications reported another sharp drop in DSL customer additions in the third quarter as it continued to rack up customers for its FiOS fiber-to-the-home services, some of which made the switch from DSL.

The company added 202,000 new net FiOS video customers during the third quarter, 21% more than it added in the second. The company now has 717,000 FiOS TV customers, it said, a 15% penetration of the market.

Verizon also added 229,000 new net subscribers of FiOS high-speed Internet service during the quarter, 13% more than in the second quarter. It now has 1.3 million subscribers of FiOS Internet service, 20% of the 6.5 million homes it can sell the service to.

“We’re rolling out FiOS about as fast as we can at this point,” said Denny Strigl, the company’s chief operating officer.

Verizon added 56,000 net new DSL subscribers in the quarter, a sharp drop from the nearly 300,000 of a year ago and the approximately 85,000 added in the second quarter.

But the company also converted about 40,000 DSL subscribers to FiOS subscribers at the same time (45,000 DSL customers converted in the second quarter).

In addition to mining its own DSL customers, Verizon claimed to be taking broadband customers from cable operators and “some new to the category,” Strigl said.

Access line loss was up sequentially but down 4.5% from a year ago to 664,000 lines, a change the company attributed to the churn-reducing effect of bundled triple-play services. Of the 6.5 million homes now able to order FiOS service, 72% can receive the triple play of voice, video and data.