Frontier Offers Philo, Becomes Latest Telecom to Give Up on Pay TV

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

https://www.nexttv.com/news/frontier-offers-philo-becomes-latest-telecom-to-give-up-on-pay-tv


Now Frontier is one of a few Internet providers who hands over their TV subscription division to another party such as various MVPD's such as Philo, Tubi, YoutubeTV and Hulu TV as traditional cable subscriptions fall.

Frontier Communications has become the latest telecom to retrench from the traditional pay TV business and simply offer a third-party virtual MVPD service to its subscribers to what is now its core service offering, broadband.

Philo, which offers a bundle of 59 entertainment-themed channels—no broadcast networks, or sports or news—for an industry-low $20 a month—announced this week that both Frontier and cable company WideOpenWest will offer its service to its broadband-only customers.



Frontier paid Verizon $10.54 billion in 2016 for Fios assets in California, Texas and Florida. But less than four years after that deal closed, Frontier seems to be content with rendering its Fios service a single-play offering.



Frontier’s pay TV subscriber base shrunk to below 700,000 at the end of the third quarter. And like virtually all other North American pay TV operators, the company faces a virtuous cycle—the more its customer base for TV shrinks, the less bargaining power it has to push back against programmers in licensing negotiations.