A healthy dose of fixed wireless access (FWA) and Fios gains helped Verizon achieve its best broadband net additions in a decade. But that headline disguised a sequential slowdown in consumer FWA subscriber growth as well as a year-on-year uptick in DSL losses.
The operator delivered a total of 437,000 broadband net additions in Q1 2023, compared to 229,000 in the year-ago period. Fios net additions rose to 67,000 from 60,000 in Q1 2022 and overall FWA net additions hit 393,000 compared to 194,000 a year ago. Within that figure, consumer FWA net adds of 256,000 were up from 112,000 in Q1 2022 but fell from 262,000 in Q4.
Verizon doesn’t break out its DSL numbers, but the difference between its Fios net additions and total wireline net additions implied a loss of 23,000 in the recent quarter. That was up from 18,000 in Q1 2022, but it’s worth nothing DSL losses have consistently hovered at just over 20,000 since Q2 2022.
As usual, executives didn’t say much about Fios on the call other than to note that the segment continued to post record low churn. They also reiterated plans to deploy Fios to another 500,000 passings this year and outgoing CFO Matt Ellis stated they will look to use funding from the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program to expand its fiber “where it makes the most sense for us.”
Given Verizon’s focus on fixed wireless over fiber, analysts had plenty of questions about the future of the business as well as the network’s ability to handle increased traffic as it scales.
CEO Hans Vestberg noted the operator stands to gain 100MHz of additional C-Band spectrum later this year which it plans to deploy in urban areas to benefit FWA and wireless customers who are currently being served with 60MHz of C-Band.
“I feel really confident that we will manage this capacity without any problems to the [subscriber] levels we talked about and way beyond that,” Vestberg said.
Consolidated revenue of $32.9 billion was down 1.9% year on year from $33.6 billion. Consumer revenue dipped from $25.3 billion to $24.9 billion, while business revenue fell from $7.7 billion to just under $7.5 billion. Despite the revenue slide, net income rose 6.5% to $5 billion.