SureWest Grows to 19,657 IPT Subscribers

SureWest is a telephone company that is both an incumbent and a competitive carrier in areas around Sacramento, California. It currently has 146 thousand access lines, which makes it one of the largest U.S. independent telephone companies.

It has been a leading IPTV company in the U.S. based on a service that is offered over ADSL in its incumbent areas and over FTTH services where it offers competitive services. Its IPTV subscribers grew from 19,657 at the end of 2006 compared to 16,138 at the end of 2005.

SureWest has a FTTH service in Elk Grove, a suburb of Sacramento where it competes with ATT for telephone services and Comcast for TV services. The number of homes passed by its fiber service increased to 98,900 at the end of 2006 compared to 88,764 at the end of 2005. The penetration of its FTTH service was at 23.5 percent at the end of 2006 compared to 22.3 percent at the end of 2005.

The details of SureWest's 2006 results can be found at

http://www.surw.com/media_relations/press/releases/ShowPR.php?Head_ID=208

Click on the Metrics link to get the subscriber counts cited in this post.

SureWest is a bellwether for U.S. carriers. Its success against Comcast is probably more interesting from an IPTV perspective than its success against ATT. It shows that ATT and Verizon can achieve a 25 market penetration of their IPTV services. They will both be quite happy if they match SureWest's success. Verizon is well on its way but ATT has not gotten out of the blocks yet.