Marketing Telco TV

Doug Williams | March 12, 2008, 03:01 PM

Yesterday, Light Reading reported that AT&T claims 90 percent broadband penetration of its U-verse TV subscribers. This statistic highlights an important difference between how AT&T and Verizon are attacking the TV market with their new fiber-enhanced services.

AT&T is focusing on acquiring the TV subscriber first and foremost, and hoping that broadband and voice services will follow. In fact, customers cannot subscribe to AT&T Yahoo! High-Speed Internet U-verse enabled (that just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?) on a standalone basis. Perhaps this was an implicit acknowledgment that no one would do so, since it was only recently that AT&T began offering U-verse broadband at download speeds exceeding its current DSL speeds.

Verizon, on the other hand, offers up FiOS Internet or TV on a standalone basis, if the customer so desires. In the past, Verizon has even launched FiOS Internet prior to receiving its local TV franchise agreement. Results from the fourth quarter of 2007 reveal that Verizon has 61 percent overlap between FiOS TV and FiOS Internet, up from 30 percent overlap a year ago. Clearly, customers are moving migrating toward the Internet/TV bundle despite the availability of the standalone offerings.

So not only have these companies approached the last-mile network design differently, they’ve each chosen distinctly different marketing approaches as well. It is of course too early to tell which approach is working better, but it's something I'll be keeping an eye on.

Jupiter recently collected consumer survey data on factors that influence the purchase of bundled services; clients should stay tuned for a Vision Report on this issue towards the end of the summer. If you can’t wait that long, set up an Inquiry through your CSM and we can talk about some of the topline numbers.