Tucows' Ting Internet may still be an insurgent player in the FTTH broadband market, but the service provider says that its Ting unit is on track to gain a sizable number of customers in the markets it serves in 2018.
Elliot Noss, president and CEO of Tucows, told investors during its second-quarter earnings call that the company is seeing good signs of progress in the five markets where it currently offers FTTH services.
“We continue to expect 20% adoption among serviceable addresses in a year and 50% in 5 years,” Noss said during the call, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript. “These take rates, and with all the operational improvements I've mentioned, will be paying about $2,500 to $3,000 per customer, and those customers will be worth about $1,000 a year in margin.”
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Although Tucows did not reveal how many customers Ting Internet has or other cities it is targeting, the service provider said that it is seeing progress and demand growth.
Noss noted that in Charlottesville, Virginia, the service provider continues to install customers every week. Similarly, in Westminster and Holly Springs, Ting is only limited by how fast it can expand the network.
“While Charlottesville continued its steady growth in Q2, the combination of Westminster and Holly Springs, both at earlier stages, more than doubled in customers, recurring revenue and, most importantly, operational capacity,” Noss said.
Meanwhile, in Centennial, Colorado, and Sandpoint, Idaho, Ting is in the early stages of network planning and deployment, with a solid customer pipeline.
Stopping short of naming any specific targets, Noss confirmed that it is negotiating new agreements with other towns interested in getting Ting’s FTTH service.
“We're in active conversations with some viable prospects to be new Ting towns,” Noss said. “I note that these discussions are always necessarily quiet until they are not.”
Driven by the acquisition of Enom, the larger Ting Mobile subscriber base and, to a lesser extent, the incremental contribution of the Melbourne IT international wholesale domain reseller channel—which the company acquired in the second quarter of last year—total revenues for the second quarter grew 78% to $84 million from $47.3 million for the same period last year.