Roseville, Ca.-based independent ILEC SureWest may not be exactly rejoicing nor crying over their Q1 2010 revenue report as it is a mirror image of its Q1 2009 results.
Typical of every ILEC, SureWest saw various ups and downs in Q1 2010 in their legacy voice and next-gen IP offerings. While broadband access rose nine percent, declining PSTN voice subscriptions kept the revenue needle at $60.2 million, down one percent from Q1 09.
SureWest has been attempting to stem wireline voice bleeding through the advent of its Broadband VoIP product. The VoIP effort has been met with modest success as 43 percent, or 6,000, of the 14,000 year-over-year telecom residential voice RGU losses migrated to the VoIP product.
Business revenues, not surprisingly, were also down in Q1. During the quarter, telecom business revenues declined 7 percent year-over-year to $8.4 billion, a factor SureWest attributes to a decrease in small- and medium-sized business customers that were hit hard by California's slumping real estate industry.
But despite ongoing slowdown of its legacy voice network revenues, SureWest believes that its ongoing investments in wireless backhaul and advanced digital TV service could pay off. While it would not reveal any names, SureWest reported that it has garnered agreements with two large wireless operators for wireless backhaul to about 200 towers. Then, on the video side, SureWest in January introduced its Advanced Digital TV product that leverages Microsoft's Mediaroom platform.
For more:
- see this Sacramento Bee article
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