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Verizon Will Sell More DSL, FiOS Assets At 'The Right Price'
Verizon just got done selling all of its fixed-line network assets in California, Texas and Florida to Frontier Communications, and the company is giving every indication that more deals may be in the works. Speaking to investors during the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference 2015, Verizon CFO Fran Shammo told attendees the company will consider additional deals if they are at the "right price" and geographically make sense:
quote:
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"For the right price and right terms, if there's an asset we don't believe is strategic to Verizon and can return shareholder value, we'll dispose of that asset," Shammo said. "If you look at Florida, Texas and California, these are three island properties and FiOS is a small footprint of those properties compared to the copper footprint except for Florida because it was just Tampa."
Of course there's still plenty of areas in the Northeast Verizon doesn't have much interest in upgrading from DSL -- including most of upstate New York and cities like Boston, Buffalo, Alexandria and Baltimore. Pressed again for whether Verizon might expand FiOS again someday, Shammo politely stated no:
quote:
"You should expect wireline capex to trend up and wireline capex to trend down," Shammo said. "Within the wireline business we still have legitimate LFAs that we have to complete in cities like New York City, Philadelphia and D.C."
Capped wireless service is significantly more profitable, less regulated and less unionized that fixed-line service, and Verizon has made their intentions to continue veering sharply away from the latter abundantly clear.

Most recommended from 95 comments



ITALIAN926
join:2003-08-16

5 recommendations

ITALIAN926

Member

Good riddance

Sell the whole damn Wireline footprint to Frontier, but for the Love of God Mr Shammo, be sure to stay employed on the wireless side, and take McAdam with you.

Bring back Seidenberg to actually get things done with FiOS.
nfotiu
join:2009-01-25

3 recommendations

nfotiu

Member

Google?

I always expected Google to buy FIOS. Seems like it would be a good fit for both companies.

Zenit_IIfx
The system is the solution
Premium Member
join:2012-05-07
Purcellville, VA
·Comcast XFINITY

3 recommendations

Zenit_IIfx

Premium Member

Sell off VA

I would not be sad if VZ let us go, actually I welcome such an event. VZ's current management does not care about its wire line last-mile infrastructure. They want to keep cutting costs and shrinking the budget. My question is what budget is there left to shrink? You already repair the telephone network with ####### trash bags...what, your going to downgrade from Hefty to Great Value brand?

What was C&P Telephone (as well as Contel) has been driven into the ground under VZ - all of the focus went into their wealthy urban & dense suburban markets, they let the rest of the footprint die on the vine, handing a monopoly over to Comcast. Hell there are CO's without DSL, its like getting 80's phone service.

Even in those central office wire centers beyond the dense deployments of Fairfax, East Loudoun, Prince William, Richmond, and VA Beach where VZ did deploy FIOS the deployment is far from complete. Sometimes the deployments are as small as 3 or 5 subdivisions (ignoring everything that is not greenfield), or they skip over the population center for some god-forsaken reason.

Like my case. We got told for 7 years by VZ that FIOS was coming. They put in GPON OLT's in 07 in the CO, they sat doing NOTHING until 2012 (wtf, you complain about the income from landline,you buy new equipment, and you let it SIT COLLECTING DUST???)

By then VZ had found a loophole in the franchise agreement allowing them to skip over incorporated towns that did not negotiate their own franchise, so all they had to do was wire the rural portions of the wirecenter and some outlying subdivisions here. So the dense town of 8000 people that surrounds the CO just gets copper products while people with 5-10 acre farms get FIOS. The town pleaded with VZ only to get told "we only care about wireless at this time."
So, I am stuck with Comcast, which has been a miserable experience in the past 4 months now (they know VZ has no intention of finishing the job of build out).

...so I welcome this announcement...

I am sorry for those of you with FIOS service now...it must be terrifying to know a shake-up could happen, and that you could be banished to the Frontier and loose your 500/500 service...
biochemistry
Premium Member
join:2003-05-09
92361

2 recommendations

biochemistry

Premium Member

Get it over with

Why not just spin off the wireline side as a completely separate company? Verizon cannot think beyond wireless and have run their wireline side into the ground.