Verizon kills DSL seasonality myth

Who hasn't listened to a quarterly earnings call of some telecom company and heard a CEO explain revenue declines as result of seasonal trends in customer spending? Maybe there's some validity to it in consumer electronics markets where people buy a lot more around the holidays and less in earlier quarters, but in the world of telecom services, I always wondered if it was a mythical excuse for doing poorly.

This week, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg struck fear into the hearts of many a sales rep when he disagreed with the notion of seasonal spending on broadband access services. Too bad, because a lot of companies had sought to explain away last quarter's slow broadband growth by blaming it on a slow spending season, rather than some indication that penetration has found a long-term plateau.

For more:
- See Telephony's story on Seidenberg's comments