Cablevision Results Shake The Telecoms (CMCSA)(TWX)(T)(VZ)(CVC)

Cablevision revenues were no great stuff. Revenue rose to $1.41 billion from $1.24 billion in the same quarter a year ago. The company’s net loss was a bit improved to $53 million.Average monthly revenue per video subscriber rose from $96.69 to $113.13 from last year’s quarter. That should be very, very good news to cable companies and the telecoms who want to offer IPTV over fiber. The consumer will spend a healthy buck and the revenue per unit grows much faster than inflation.Cablevision added almost 94,000 digital video subscribers, over 74,000 high speed data customers and 113,000 digital phone customer (VoIP). On that note, the cable execs at Time Warner and Comcast should be heading to DisneyLand.On the other hand, the managements at AT&T and Verizon need to be put on suicide watch. Cablevision is hardly the largest cable company. That it put on over 100,000 VoIP customers in a quarter is really extraordinary. If their pace is for half a million new digital phone units per annum and Time Warner and Comcast are added more of these units due to their larger size, the telecoms are obviously watching millions of their core customers walk out the door.The fiber-to-the-home service that the telecoms want to offer to their customers so that those clients can have high-speed internet and IPTV depends somewhat on them having a stable customer base. That won’t be true of the cable guys have their way.Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.