Bell Aliant’s fibre/IPTV growth offset by fixed voice decline

Atlantic Canadian telco Bell Aliant reported revenues of CAD695 million (USD664.5 million) in the third quarter of 2013, down by 0.4% year-on-year as growth in TV, broadband internet, other data, wireless and other revenues were offset by declines in local and long-distance telephony revenues. EBITDA for the three months ended 30 September 2013 fell by 2.2% year-on-year to CAD327 million, while net income slipped by CAD7 million from the year-ago quarter to CAD81 million. Operating expenses grew 1.4% y-o-y to CAD368 million in Q3 2013 largely due to growth in TV content, marketing and customer support costs from a growing direct fibre triple-play ‘FibreOP’ customer base. FTTH footprint expansion in the third quarter of 2013 continued at a similar pace as in 3Q12; Bell Aliant passed an additional 45,000 premises with fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) in three months (compared to 47,000 in the year-ago period), bringing total FTTH coverage to 770,000 premises at the end of September 2013. IPTV revenue grew by CAD12 million (56.1%) year-on-year in Q3 due to 52.0% growth in IPTV customers to 163,600 at the end of September. FibreOP TV added 16,300 net new customers during the quarter to reach 142,100, a portion of which were migrations from Bell Aliant’s fibre-to-the-node (FTTN)/xDSL TV service. Overall net IPTV customer additions were 14,500 in the third quarter of 2013, compared to 12,300 a year earlier. Internet revenue increased by CAD6 million (4.8%) y-o-y, with residential internet ARPU up 3.4%.