Verizon Wireless CEO Dan Mead is Retiring → Well one can hope the new CEO will invest in FIOS

But it seems highly unlikely as they sell of rotting copper to pay for wireless stuff.

There is only so much Verizon can invest into wireless before they won't get the money back in profits.

T-Mobile is really starting to harm Verizon's long term wireless outlook.

I just have to wonder how much more wire line stuff they can sell off before those buying the crap copper can't pay the price they want any more?

sadly its doubtful, Investors do not want wireline when wireless is a free money factory. from the extremely high consumer costs relative to wired to the minimal expense per thousand served for wireless its a cash cow and they will be milking it.

This is just VZW's CEO which is controlled somewhat independently from VZ proper. VZ's CEO McAdam is the one who says when they will spend or not spend on the ILEC assets.

Granted, the new CEO of VZW is the head of VZ proper ILEC assets as well, but if you look at the bio he is a wireless man. VZ put a wireless man in charge of wire line, and now he is in charge of both.

I guess then McAdam should retire next

I wonder if the next "guy" will see the forest through the trees?
You can't expect wireless revenue to continue to climb much longer...
and they will have little else to count on except the old Bell Atlantic wireline footprint. But perhaps that is the plan. Maybe they will build out all fiber to that area in time.

Fiber is very profitable over a 20-30 year timeframe. Investors thinking in single-digit years in telecom are idiots. They shouldn't be in telecom if they're thinking that short term.

but sadly they are, and its affecting other industries because now they think everything should return asap.. there is no long term investments anymore sadly

Hardly a "free money factory" considering Verizon invested almost $10.5B last year and $9.4B the year before. Looking at the margins, yes, Verizon enjoys a healthy 40.2% for wireless. It's also interesting to note that Verizon's wireline margins come in at 23.2%. Not too shabby, but comparing those two segments one can easily see why Verizon's current focus is on wireless.

I'm in telecom for the decent cash that's returned to shareholders. As long as those distributions remain intact, investors will keep their money with solid companies like Verizon.

Yet companies like Netflix continue growing with investors throwing capital into the businesses for long-term growth. How do you explain situations like that?

Now you're catching on

Calling 40% "healthy" is laughable. That's more than Apple. Verizon earns money simply for existing.

Verizon does a lot more than simply exist.

I would actually consider that excessive profit, that indicates
a lack of fiduciary duty on the part of Verizon executives to balance investment in infrastructure with returns to shareholders.
In the long run it will destroy the company.

You should be angry at Verizon for not thinking about their long term future in wireline and not rolling out FIOS to 100% of their wireline customers.

So, Verizon should invest more in wireless? Are you a shareholder? What profit margins are acceptable in your mind?

Um, they should invest more on the FIBER INFRASTRUCTURE.
What is acceptable? Not allowing your fiber infrastructure to degrade, and it appears that they are not even doing the proper maintenance on that as of late. They are neglecting maintenance in general and that to me would indicate fiduciary malfeasance by the executives and the BoD.
They should be fired, as it endangers the long term health of the entire
organization.

Oh, well those margins are less than wireless, so as as shareholder, I expect Verizon to invest more in wireless to continue generating the most revenue possible. I asked what profit margin is acceptable in your mind.

Nope. I have no reason to be angry with Verizon. I believe Verizon is scaling back it's wireline footprint and will fully deploy FTTH to that footprint over time. As a shareholder, I'm happy with that long-term strategy.

Do you think a complete shift to FTTH in their original Bell Atlantic/NYNEX footprint will increase the profit margins on wireline?

Id imagine FTTH has much lower upkeep expenses compared to the aging copper network. Especially once they can get everybody on it and shut down the copper.

Assuming existing competition remains at similar levels, yes, I believe FTTH could grow revenues and over time and increase margins.

They don't have a long-term strategy, and that's a problem. If they did, they would have continued their FIOS buildout throughout their native territory, including the areas they have since sold, as fast as they could get the fiber from Corning and stick it up on the poles.

Any company using copper lines has no future. And Verizon still has a LOT of copper lines, including in areas that don't have any cable, and are thus an extremely lucrative market for FIOS, yet Verizon continually refuses to build out.

They also should have offered gigabit a couple of years ago. They have the network to do it, and it would give them a huge leg up over cable. They threw that down the drain, and instead are running their stupid "half fast" campaign, when cable actually has faster speeds than FIOS at the equivalent price points. At this point, cable is about 1-2 years away from offering gigabit on the download, and Verizon is still sitting around, watching their potential lead in speeds about to go away.

Yes, especially in areas that don't have cable now, the very rural areas. There, they don't have to offer promotional pricing, or discounts, or contracts, or anything. They can just offer everything full price, and everyone will sign up.

That's your long-term strategy, not Verizon's.Why? It's a gimmick. It's an arbitrary number that most consumers don't understand.

But it's stupid to wait any longer to start building FTTH. The copper is bleeding funds and customers for no good reason. Really at this point Verizon investing more in wireless will not show much more returns. Folks pay them for the map of 4G coverage and they got it.

If customers cared a ton about the speed of it, they would have been losing customers by the bucket load around 2012 or so.

As someone who is in the stock market as a trader it isn't hard for me to spot 10 year plans VS 30 year plans. Verizon at best is thinking about the next 10 years more likely the next 5 as MBA's love there 5 year plans to show investors.

I really get a kick out of so called "investors" who act like 5 years is "long term" no matter what business they have shares in. Or claim they have the interest of the long term out look, when they plan to exit the "investment" in 5 or less years.

It's investors like this that make bobbles like the 1929 and 2008 crash. Because they want to keep pump and dumping, they deflect the blame to the "evil" day traders and those who short stock.

I bet you also lost about half of your total 401k or money invested in the market in the 2008 crash.

Copper isn't a long-term strategy period. Fiber is the only other option than copper for VZ. Hence, that's their only legitimate long-term strategy.

Some power users do understand gigabit, and even stupid people can be swayed by advertising showing that it's 10x faster than cable or whatever.

Verizon is thinking on a year to year basis, not a 10-year or 20-year plan, as those plans involve thousands of miles of fiber going on poles and in the ground.

I know that, but I wanted to give some room there just to be nice.

Truth is like you said, because in even in wireless they have done some really stupid stuff.

AT&T did bigger city's right with LTE, Verizon not so much. AT&T did down tilting to reduce the range while making for better in building use.

This would reduce customer's per tower and because every tower had LTE instead of every other like Verizon it lead to AT&T having much better speed and signal strength.

AT&T has even put up a ton of those mini towers and Verizon has sat on there butt the whole time. If it wasn't for how much folks hate AT&T just because it is called AT&T then Verizon would have been grilled hard over that.

I only keep them for my unlimited data plan. Wireless is hitting a limit for Verizon and it's starting to show, if they don't quickly get to work on FTTH. Well I might just be in for getting some puts on VZ down the road.

AT&T seems to care more about the long term than Verizon right now and that is just really something. At lest AT&T is doing limited new FTTH while Verizon quit years ago and keeps saying FIOS is a dead end they won't build more of.

Yeah, AT&T struggled for a long time on the network side, and they still have a lot of loose ends that they haven't tied up, but they did implement a very robust LTE rollout. The wireline side of AT&T though did U-Verse, which is just a disaster, and very short sighted, even more so than Verizon's partial rollout of FIOS and slow FIOS upgrades. At least when Verizon gets around to FIOS upgrades, the fiber is there and ready to provide MPEG-4 video, gigabit internet, and the like.

I would have to disagree on FTTH. AT&T is doing FTTPR not FTTH in any meaningful way. When they are rolling out to several million homes, then I'll start to believe it. And they're still using their crappy U-Verse IPTV system, and they don't have even higher bitrates or anything for fiber subs.

I'm pretty sure Verizon is rolling out more FIOS this year than AT&T is Gigapower. Sure, Verizon is rolling out FIOS to buildings and complexes and streets that are already in franchised areas, and they are not adding any new franchises, but AT&T is upgrading only a tiny number of customers to Gigapower.

Not saying it is. Do you honestly believe that Verizon intends on supporting copper long-term? I can't imagine anyone that would believe that's a viable long-term strategy.Those minority consumers are noise in business. You allude to advertising, which is all that the race to 1 Gbps is at this point; a marketing gimmick.