CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) saw the same second quarter broadband seasonal slowdown that plagued other wireline telcos, but its fiber to the node (FTTN)-based broadband service now serves 7.4 million customers.
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Puckett (Image source: CenturyLink) |
Karen Puckett, executive vice president and COO, said that in areas where it offers FTTN-based services it has lower customer churn rates.
"In terms of the churn to lower, what I would say is the footprint, if we look at our fiber-to-the-node footprint, we certainly have better churn in closed rates than we do on our ATM footprint," said Puckett during the Q2 earnings call. "So that is a fact. But we now have 7.4 million households on our fiber-to-the-node product."
Puckett added that the typical seasonal customer disconnects tend to come from customers that spend part of the year in their territories and college students.
"Seasonality, as we've grown in with the Qwest acquisition we have more snowbird type states and so we did have a lot of a success with snowbirds in terms of getting them in," she said. "Typically that's people going back to the Northeast or to the Midwest as well college students."
As it forecast for the second quarter, the service provider did lose 8,400 broadband subscribers.
Despite the broadband losses, the telco reported that like AT&T and Verizon that customers that took a triple play bundle of broadband, Prism TV, and voice were "significantly less likely to churn then single play voice customers."
For more:
- here's the earnings transcript (sub req.)
Earnings roundup: Wireline telecom earnings in the second quarter of 2013
Special report: Women in Wireline 2013: Leaders shaping telecom services, innovation, and policy
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