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Verizon Loses 41,000 Pay TV Subscribers, Blames Strike

Verizon's second quarter earnings indicate that the company lost 41,000 pay TV subscribers and 13,000 broadband subscribers, something Verizon executives blame on striking union workers. Verizon had warned that its subscriber additions this quarter would be ugly due to the strike, with consumers either waiting until the strike was over to order service, or heading to a competitor for fear Verizon wouldn't be able to fulfill the order. The company then struggled with order backlog after unionized workers got back to work.

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Still, Verizon saw a net income of $900 million on revenue of $30.53 billion for the quarter.

On wireless Verizon reported 615,000 retail postpaid net wireless additions for the quarter, though 356,000 of those were tablets all but given away on promotion by the telco. The company added 462,000 4G smartphones to its postpaid subscriber totals for the quarter, but saw only an 86,000 net phone additions thanks to a net decline in basic and 3G phones.

It's these shrinking fixed and mobile subscriber numbers that has Verizon looking to please investors via growth in other areas. As such the lion's share of the company's earnings call was dedicated to the telco's $4.8 billion acquisition of Yahoo, the latest puzzle piece in Verizon's attempt to shift from stodgy old telco to new millennial-focused media and advertising juggernaut.

“By acquiring Yahoo, we are scaling up to be a major competitor in mobile media," said Verizon chairman and CEO Lowell McAdam. "Yahoo is a complementary business to AOL, giving us market-leading content brands and a valuable portfolio of online properties and mobile applications that attract over 1 billion monthly active consumer views. We expect this acquisition to put us in a great position as a top global mobile media company and give us a significant source of revenue growth for the future.”

Verizon's full earnings report can be found here.

Most recommended from 22 comments



telcotech
IBEW 2222 Boston, MA
Premium Member
join:2004-09-02
united state

14 recommendations

telcotech

Premium Member

Bull Sh!t

Verizon executives should blame the losses on their failed union-busting agenda. Blaming "striking union workers" is a cop-out. Union members are at Verizon and have every intention of remaining there. A seven week strike ought to make that pretty clear.

TIGERON
join:2008-03-11
Boston, MA

7 recommendations

TIGERON

Member

And with that, another wireline sale is on the horizon

Get ready for Frontier to take over your Verizon area soon.

Anondcad8
@2602:100.x

4 recommendations

Anondcad8

Anon

How does FiOS sale to Frontier fir in?

Clearly these were Verizon customers last year but not now. So does that work? Clearly the number of customers SHOULD be lower.

maartena
Elmo
Premium Member
join:2002-05-10
Orange, CA

3 recommendations

maartena

Premium Member

They can blame the strike all they want....

...but all pay TV companies have been losing subscribers. So those Verizon customers aren't switching to other providers because their installers are not on strike, they are dumping pay-TV for like the 5th year in a row and go with streaming-only options. This is just an investor portfolio cover-up, lipstick on a pig to make it look pretty, but its still a pig. A pig that is getting thinner.....
navyson
join:2011-07-15
Upper Marlboro, MD

2 recommendations

navyson

Member

They could also lose me as a customer

After having their old Fios TV router for free all these years, now, they want to charge me a monthly fee for "maintenance". I have never had an issue with the router or have I ever need it to be replaced. In fact, the Wifi on the router is turned off since I use a WAP. BS charge.

They should not get away with it. We should call up Consumer Reports/Consumers Union, FTC, BBB among others and call them out on this bullshit.