Verizon has posted their second quarter earnings showing that big red lost $198 million in the second quarter -- mostly due to the company's continued and fairly significant layoffs. For scale, Verizon now has 24,500 fewer employees than one year ago -- and spent $2.3 billion in the second quarter dealing with these buyouts. The workforce reductions, buyouts and layoffs in recent years stem largely from landline losses, but also from Verizon's massive shift away from rural America.

On the wireless front, Verizon actually managed to add 665,000 contract wireless customers, more than the 496,000 for AT&T -- despite not having the iPhone. That said, Verizon's 5.2 percent growth in wireless service revenues is substantially slower than AT&T. That's something that should change shortly, as Verizon's expected to follow AT&T's lead and impose a low cap (200MB to 2GB) high overage data pricing model very soon.

Speaking on a conference call with analysts and the press, Verizon CFO John Killian wouldn't get specific about the wireless data price changes everyone knows is coming (in large part because Verizon keeps incessantly hinting that they're coming). All Killian would say is that Verizon is looking at AT&T's tiered pricing models), is "monitoring the situation," while insisting Verizon won't be making any sudden moves. That seems to run contrary to rumors that this new pricing is dropping next week.

On the terrestrial front, like AT&T, Verizon continues to bleed traditional landline customers, and residential broadband growth remains slower than Verizon would like. The company added 196,000 net FiOS Internet subscribers and 174,000 net FiOS TV customers, bringing their FiOS total to 3.8 million FiOS Internet customers and 3.2 million FiOS TV subscribers. Verizon says FiOS is now available for sale to 12.9 million premises. These slow adds are usually good news for companies like Comcast who has been adding more broadband subscribers per quarter than AT&T and Verizon combined.

Verizon says they now serve 9.3 million broadband connections, with continued DSL subsriber losses offset by FiOS gains (AT&T actually posted a net loss in total broadband subscribers yesterday). FiOS Internet penetration was 29.7 percent at quarter's end. Verizon's essentially halted FiOS deployment, with Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg previously saying he'd like that penetration number at around 40% before considering what to do next in terms of FiOS expansion. Assuming the FiOS footprint gets expanded at all.