Verizon Revenue Now 66 Percent Wireless

Verizon Wireless now earns about 66 percent of all revenue from wireless.

In the first quarter of 2013, Verizon earned $3.6 billion from consumers buying fixed network services. Wireless contributed $16.7 billion in the first quarter, by way of comparison.

That isn’t to say the fixed network results were negligible, or unimportant. But it’s hard to ignore the major drivers of revenue and customer growth, or earnings growth.

That story is clearly mobile services.

The consumer fixed network revenue results represented an increase of 4.3 percent compared to first-quarter 2012, and consumer average revenue per user for wireline services increased to $107.15 in first-quarter 2013 – up 9.5 percent compared to Q1 2012.

FiOS revenue also grew 15.1 percent, to $2.6 billion in Q1 2013 compared to $2.3 billion in Q1 2012. ARPU for FiOS customers continued to be more than $150 per month.

Sales of strategic services to global enterprise customers increased 6 percent compared to Q1 2012, and represented 55.6 percent of total enterprise revenue, Verizon says.

Verizon added 188,000 net new FiOS Internet connections in Q1 2013, marking the third consecutive quarter of sequential growth in net customer additions.

The company also added 169,000 net new FiOS Video connections in the quarter.

Verizon had a total of 5.6 million FiOS Internet and 4.9 million FiOS Video connections at the end of the quarter, representing year-over-year increases of 12.0 percent and 12.5 percent, respectively.

FiOS Internet penetration was 38.2 percent at the end of the first quarter of 2013, compared to 36.4 percent at the end of Q1 2012.

In the same periods, FiOS Video penetration was 34.1 percent, relative to 32.3 percent. The FiOS network passed 17.8 million premises by the end of first-quarter 2013.

The fixed network arguably has strategic value for Verizon Communications. What is not so clear is how much revenue value the fixed network has anymore.