Verizon’s CEO says its on track to reach 650K new Fios subscribers in 2025
Verizon is confident it will continue expanding its Fios fiber broadband customer base as more consumers purchase higher-speed packages.
The service provider has set a goal to reach nearly 700,000 Fios customers this year. This figure comes before the fiber broadband customer base it will gain when it completes its acquisition of Frontier.
After it closes the Frontier acquisition, Verizon expects the combined build to be up to 1 million or more passings annually.
Speaking to investors during Verizon's fourth-quarter earnings call, Hans Vestberg, CEO, said that having delivered Fios for over 20 years, Verizon continues to find that finding customers sees value in the service.
“As we outlined our broadband strategy at the end of last year, we said that we're now going to increase open-for-sales by basically 50%, going to 650,000 this year,” he said.
Vestberg added that it is confident it can continue to scale because consumers see the value in higher-speed services and that it is finding new, lower-cost ways to build out fiber. The telco previously outlined these in the broadband strategy it issued in October.
“The country's economic situation is better today, as is purchasing power. Second, broadband is a necessity. We will also find out that we can deploy fiber cheaply. So, all that is playing is that we can keep our return on investment on this increase of Fios.”
Enhancing broadband share
Verizon continued to take broadband market share with growing demand for Fios and fixed wireless access (FWA) offerings.
During the quarter, Verizon added 408,000 broadband net subscribers, continuing its quarterly pace of over 350,000 broadband net additions.
Verizon’s Fios growth pace was 51,000, down from 55,000 in the fourth quarter of 2023.
“With 20 years of Fios experience, we continue to grow our fiber subscribers while others face challenges,” said Anthony Skiadis, CFO of Verizon.
FWA again was a key growth driver in Verizon’s broadband business, adding 373,000 new subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2024, growing the base to nearly 4.6 million fixed wireless subscribers. Verizon said it is well-positioned to achieve the next milestone of 8 to 9 million fixed wireless access subscribers by 2028.
The company’s total broadband connections grew to more than 12.3 million as of the end of the fourth quarter of 2024, representing a 15.0 percent increase year over year.
“Our growth was fueled by significant momentum in both Fixed Wireless Access and Fios. We have the most complete and differentiated broadband offering, covering all market segments,” Vestberg said. “As announced in October, we expect to cover over 100 million homes and businesses nationwide over time.”
While the company saw broadband growth again in the fourth quarter—a trend that will continue as it completes its pending acquisition of Frontier—Verizon is not sitting still. Broadband will be a big part of the company’s capital spending plan.
“As we discussed in October, capital spending for the full year is expected to be between $17.5 billion and $18.5 billion,” Skiadis said. “This guidance is an all-in number that includes our growth initiatives. This includes incremental investments to deploy C-band to 80% to 90% of plan sites, accelerating our Fios expansion to 650,000 to open-for-sale locations, and launching our fixed wireless MDU solution.”
Broadband ARPU rising
As Verizon continued to ramp up its fiber broadband and FWA subscriber base, consumer revenue and ARPU grew.
Driven by gains in service revenue, Verizon Consumer revenue in the fourth quarter of 2024 was $27.6 billion, an increase of 2.2 percent year over year.
For the fourth quarter, consumer ARPU was $139.77 in fourth-quarter 2024, up 4.2 percent from fourth-quarter 2023.
Sowmyanarayan Sampath, EVP and CEO of Verizon Consumer Group, said the company is seeing ARPU increase as more consumers take higher-level product packages.
“Customers are taking more of our premium plans, gig plans on the Fios side and our premium plans on FWA,” he said. “And it goes back to the resilience and the convenience of our service.”
From an overall financial perspective, Verizon reported a consolidated net income of $5.1 billion for the fourth quarter of 2024, compared to a net loss of $2.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Verizon said this result was driven by wireless service revenue growth, partially offset by the impact of higher upgrade volumes and continued declines in Business wireline revenue.
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Sean Buckley
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