Verizon Upgrades Its Custom TV Service
Verizon is introducing the next generation of Fios Custom TV pay TV plan, which now offers a choice of one of two packages with over 100 channels and three optional genre-specific packs. The new Custom TV gives Fios TV customers a choice of two plans:
- Custom TV - Essentials, which has TV's popular content in the Lifestyle, Entertainment, Pop Culture, Kids, and News categories including Discovery Channel, Lifetime, History, Bravo, Fox News and many other channels.
- Custom TV - Sports & More, which has national sports networks, such as NBCSN, Fox Sports 1 and ESPN, all the regional sports networks in a customer's market, and some non-sports channels on TV from a variety of genres, including Cartoon Network, CNBC, and TNT.
After choosing their plan, Verizon's customers can enhance their channel lineup by selecting up to three additional, genre-based add-on packs for $6 each - Movie Lovers Pack, Kids Teens & Family Pack, and the Global Sports Pack.
As with all Fios TV packages, Verizon wil offer its Custom TV customers the Fios TV Local package, which includes the customer's local broadcast channels and other local programming.
Custom TV triple plays with Fios Digital Voice and Fios Internet with symmetrical upload and download speeds of 100 megabits per second, start at $69.99 per month online.
Verizon's customers can also still purchase Verizon's more traditional Fios TV plans such as Preferred HD, Extreme HD or Ultimate HD.
Fios TV offers more than 625 all-digital channels including up to 185 HD channels and over 100,000 On Demand titles. Compared to pay-TV giants AT&T with its DirecTV acquisition last year and Comcast, FiOS has a small market in 12 states and Washington, D.C., with 5.8 million video customers as of the end of 2015.
Last yeart, ESPN sued Verizon, alleging a breach of contract, while Twenty-First Century Fox and NBC Universal have said the Custom TV offering violates their contractual obligations.