Clearly feeling the heat from Comcast's accelerating rollout of VOIP and discounted "triple-play" bundles, Verizon Communications is stepping up its own deployment of FiOS broadband data and video services around the country to counter its growing loss of phone access lines.

In their second quarter earnings call with analysts this morning, Verizon executives indicated that they are rolling out FiOS faster than expected this year, at least partly because of heightened competition from Comcast and other cable operators plunging into IP telephony. With 4.5 million homes passed by their new fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) plant by mid-July, up 1.5 million households from the close of 2005, Verizon officials are now shooting to exceed their target of 6 million homes passed by the end of the year.

Verizon executives are also looking to drive up their FiOS Internet and TV take rates faster and further than before. Disclosing its FiOS data subscriber numbers for the first time, the company said 375,000 phone customers have signed up for the high-speed Internet service so far, which amounts to 12 percent of the 3.1 million customers who could get it during the second quarter. The telco netted 111,000 FiOS data subscribers in the spring quarter.

"Could we go higher?" says Verizon Chairman & CEO Ivan Seidenberg. "The answer to that is: I expect it to and that we drive our people to make it go higher."

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— Alan Breznick, Site Editor, Cable Digital News