Verizon, FiOS losing Comcast war; will cut over 10,000 jobs: reports
"Verizon has been overspending"
Verizon, FiOS losing Comcast war; will cut over 10,000 jobs: reports
Joseph N. DiStefano
Verizon plans to keep cutting jobs, company officials told investors in a conference call after posting disappointing q4 sales and earnings. Bloomberg story here.
UPDATE: Re jobs: "We said we saw job reductions of 13,000 in 2008 and 13,000 in 2009 in our traditional landline business, and we anticipate a similar number of job reductions in 2010," Verizon spokesman Bob Varettoni told me. "These are across-the-board, not specific to any geographic area, and related to our traditional landline business. There were approximately 117,000 employees in our Wireline business segment as of the end of 2009," and another 106,000 in Verizon Wireless and other units.
EARLIER: Verizon's FiOS video service had its worst quarter since early 2007, adding just 153,000 customers, noted Deutsche Bank analyst Doug Michelson in a report to clients. "Verizon has been overspending to acquire FiOS customers," Michelson wrote. Verizon is charging phone-video-Internet customers $140/month, which "demonstrates the lack fo a price war.... Cable continues to gain share due to faster speeds than DSL."
He adds, "We believe the slowdown in FiOS video net adds is a positive for Pay TV stocks, as it demonstrates competition fears were overdone."
Verizon still shows healthy wireless (mobile phone) gains, noted Craig Moffett at Bernstein Research. But trends in Verizon's wire-based businesses "are only getting worse."
jman- i've had the same experience, but with comcast.— llh169- Laney: Yes, Fios and DSL are different products. Verizon provides both services (Fios is not widely available yet). DSL is slower and probably losing subscribers to cable. Fios is probably marginally faster than cable (higher total bandwidth) but not by the big difference between DSL and cable. I'm not sure if the author knew Fios and DSL are different.— plugh
- Verizon needs to cut back on the ads. How many flyers, newspaper inserts, etc. do they need to plaster people with in a week? Huge waste of money. But people in the advertisement department are paid to advertise, so their solution is always more ads. No one in top management has the sense to cut the massive overkill in ads rather than layoff the people who supply the service. Another dumb, inefficient, large business bureaucracy.— plugh
- I try to read Philly.com to become informed and I feel like I'm being ripped off. Does anybody edit this website? Are these articles really printed this way in the Inquirer and Daily news. This guys headline has nothing to do with the facts of the layoffs and then brings DSL into the picture as if comparing apples to apples. Ridiculous.— Phishinmule
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- I have had FiOS since the first day they offered it and haven't regretted it.— makeham98
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- Comcast is a JOKE— luvgia
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- I hate comcast I have had FIOS for i guess a little over 2 years now. I LOVE IT. I WILL NEVER SWITCH BACK TO COMCAST!!!!!!! My friend has the exact same TV as I do and he has comcast, and he doesn;t understand why my picture quality is so much better then his.— cuso20
- People with comcast let me know when you can download 100mb in less then a minute then you can talk ish about FIOS.— cuso20
- I hate Comcast and I switched to FIOS as soon as it was available. FIOS is not DSL. The person who said that does not know what he is talking about.— Wednesday
