What They're Saying

FiOS customer profile: they're rich! Verizon's cherry-picking of wealthy suburbs continues as urban consumers ignored
December 11, 2007

The Cherry Award

No...It's not what you're thinking. Rather, this award goes to the folks who (mostly) get to cherry pick their launch communities. And guess what? The biggest cherries go first...

Just consider Verizon. To date, this big, big player has lacunhed FiOS telco-video service in about 700 areas. And (try to contain your shock) these communities generally enjoy incomes well above average.

According to research by The BRIDGE Data Group,** the average FiOS neighborhood household income is more than $85,000 per year. That's a 31 percent boost over the U.S. average annual household of $65,000. (see chart)

In the top tier FiOS neighborhoods (43 percent of the neighborhoods surveyed), the average household income soars to more than $112,000.

AT&T's U-verse does pretty well too. In U-verse neighborhoods surveryed, the average household income is $74,000, and in the highest demographics (40 percent of neighborhoods surveyed) the average household income is $95,000.

Nice pickings if you can get 'em

**(The BRIDGE Data Group surveyed 14,000 individual FiOS neighborhoods and nearly 2,000 U-verse neighborhoods for this study. A single launch area is usually made up of multiple neighborhoods. "Highest demographic neighborhoods" are defined by a combination of multiple inputs including but not limited to income, housing, lifestyle and employment.)