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."
Where are all the Comcast haters now?— PhillyRising- I'm here. I hate Comcast.— tonyS
- comcast is horrible regardless of the net adds for a different provider. Comcast continually is rated worst in customer service. Comcast's infrastructure is in bad shape, they have hit the limit on bandwidth. Every comcast user I know has issue with tv picsulation. Verizon is building a new network from ground up, and it takes time to reach millions of homes.— thebaron
- Right here! I hate Comcast and if Fios was available in my area I would join in a minute. Or when Direct TV gets Comcast Sportsnet I will leave comcast forever.— storourke
- Who can believe anything written positive about Comcast or negative about a Comcast competitor in this newspaper. Comcast and Philly.com have teamed up too many times for puff pieces. Additionally, if you werent ever ahead it is hard to say you are losing.— LGbalsac
- I am a hater. There is nothing like FIOS. It is just taking time. It is a major investment to make and will not just happen overnight.— YoYo
- I am a hater. There is nothing like FIOS. It is just taking time. It is a major investment to make and will not just happen overnight.— YoYo
- We switched from Comcast to FiOS last year and haven't looked back. We pay less, get more HD CHANNELS (note that Comcast includes each available On Demand choice when they talk about all of their HD offerings) and to top it off, it is way more reliable. Not a single service outage since we switched, compared to the once-per-month downtime we had with Comcast.— djsaitta
- if you think comcast service is bad try verizon from the tech to customer service just plain lousy, worst service ever— movvshake
- Wish Fios was in my area!!!!!!!!!— teleand
- Yeah I hate Comcast. i hate the fact we (taxpayers)gave them milions of dollars to build their office building in the city. Then we gave them more tax breaks to stay in Philly. Where's my bailout? With those tax breaks, why not a lower bill? While a nice gesture, the Roberts family gave a $15 million dollar gift to a local hospital. How wealthy can you be to give that kind of money. Now they're buying NBC in a muti-billion dollar deal.— farrell325
- COmcast may be expensive, but at least when they attempt to fix something, it gets fixed. Verizon customer service is horribly inept. A few years ago, I made about 20 calls over a 2-month span for Verizon to come out for service, and to clean up after themselves. They are a complete joke - continuously handing me off to other departments. It's the classic case of one hand not knowing what the other is doing. One time, after missing an appointment by 3 days, someone called me to see if I still wanted a service call. ... The day after they finally finished (3 months later), I dumped their service, and will never go back.— jman
- YoYo- it takes time? You must not be familiar with acquition costs. You look at the numbers for Fios as a business model and it just doesnt work. While you may hate Comcast, the numbers work.— phila215
- I'm confused by the analyst's comment... aren't Fios and DSL separate products? DSL is slower (and cheaper) than cable. Fios is, I think, faster than cable.— Laney
- I HATE Comcast!— Tired of the BS
