Verizon (VZ) Goes After DirecTV (DTV) And Echostar (DISH)

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Aug 8, 5:28AM EDT

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In a recent survey reported on at GigaOm, thirty-four towns were tracked for TV and broadband customer activity in the initial 90 days that Verizon’s (VZ) fiber optics product was available.

Verizon picked up almost 12,000 new customers over the period. Just over 5,000 came from Comcast (CMCSA), but that was only about 2% of its base in the regions.

Over 4,500 of Verizon’s new subscribers came from DirecTV (DTV) and EchoStar (DISH). That was an extremely high 40% of their total bases.

It is not really surprising. Verizon’s product offers voice, broadband, and digital TV. Comcast has a similar product. But, satellite TV cannot package broadband or phone service as part of its service.

Perhaps the markets are already beginning to sense the vulnerability of sat TV. Over the last three months, Verizon shares are up 6%. Shares in Comcast are down about 2%. But DTV’s stock is off 14% and DISH is down closer to 18%.

The satellite TV stocks may have seen their best days.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.