Verizon Residential DSL Continues Negative Trend

Doug Williams | April 29, 2008, 02:16 PM

Verizon announced first quarter 2008 earnings yesterday, and revealed some interesting broadband statistics. While Om Malik noted that "Verizon's DSL growth is all but over," when you focus on the residential data, it's clear that residential DSL growth is over.

Verizon reported a net gain of 262,000 FiOS Internet customers this quarter, yet total residential broadband lines increased by just 243,000 -- which means total residential DSL lines declined by 19,000. (They declined by 1,000 last quarter, too.)

It comes as no real surprise that FiOS would cannibalize existing Verizon DSL customers, given the relative difference in speed and opportunity for triple-play bundling. How extensive is the cannibalization? On the conference call, Verizon EVP and CFO Doreen Toben acknowledged that 23% of new FiOS subscribers (about 60,000) migrated from DSL. If you do the math, that means Verizon saw just 41,000 new residential DSL subscribers this quarter. That's down from 194,000 from the year-ago period. Verizon has been hyping the roll-out of 7Mbps DSL service in more and more non-FiOS markets, so it will be interesting to see whether Verizon's future residential DSL numbers are bolstered as a result.

Keep your eyes open for Jupiter's updated Broadband Forecast, which should be out in the near future.