Traditional voice landline loss continues to be an ongoing reality for every U.S. telco, but Ivan Seidenberg, Verizon's CEO, says he's not going to waste any more of his energy thinking about it. During this week's Goldman Sachs Comunicopia conference in New York, Seidenberg declared that his "thinking has matured" and attempting to figure out when landline loss would stop "is like the dog chasing the bus."
Two substitutes are driving landline loss for Verizon and its two RBOC brothers, AT&T and Qwest; consumers are replacing their traditional landline service with cable telephony, or replacing their wired phone with a cell phone. But none of this is bothering Seidenberg. Instead of worrying about landline loss, Seidenberg says the service provider will focus more of its attention on selling cellular services and delivering enhanced video over its Fiber to the Premises-based FiOS service.
Seidenberg was quoted in a New York Times article as saying that "video is going to be the core product in the fixed-line business." Also, the telco will turn attention towards driving further integration between video and the wireless phone.
For more:
- The New York Times has this article [1]
Related article
Verizon's FiOS and business services grow amid falling earnings [2]
Links:
[1] http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/verizon-boss-hangs-up-on-landline-phone-business/?hpw
[2] http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/verizons-fios-and-business-services-grow-amidst-falling-earnings/2009-07-27