Verizon Q1: Wire-line Revenue Impacted by Wholesale Losses: Gains in FiOS, Enterprise Services

Verizon Q1 Revenue Gains in FiOS, Enterprise Services

Verizon Q1: Wire-line Revenue Impacted by Wholesale Losses: Gains in FiOS, Enterprise Services

Verizon declared its Q1 2012 earnings last week and as expected it saw gains in next-gen services like Verizon FiOS data and TV and business services like Ethernet and cloud. However the picture was clouded by a decline in wholesale revenue.

The company’s consumer revenues rose 1.7 percent to $3.4 billion. Its enterprise revenues also rose by 0.9 percent to $3.9 billion majorly due to its acquisition of cloud and data center provider Terremark.

However a decline of 8.9 percent in wholesale revenue drove the company’s overall wire-line revenue 2 percent to $9.9 billion while EBITDA margin decreased to 22,6 percent from 23.6 percent in 2011.

The Telco’s key wire-line metrics are as below:

Landline losses: Verizon continued to lose POTS voice subscriptions as expected. In Q1 the Telco lost 437,000 voice line subscribers to end the quarter with total 23.7 million subscribers.
Video and broadband: While DSL subscribers declined, in the consumer segment FiOS TV and FiOS broadband data continued to be Verizon’s shining stars. Total 104,000 broadband subscribers were added, taking its subscriber base to 8.8 million. Verizon added 108,000 new FiOS TV subscribers, taking the number of subscribers to 4.35 million. FiOS share in the company’s wire-line revenues was 63 percent.
Business and wholesale services: Verizon’s global enterprise earnings saw an increase of 0.9 percent to $3.9 billion. The major contributors in this growth were robust sales of strategic services including security and IT solutions and Terremark cloud services. Strategic revenues grew by 11.6 percent and represented 51 percent of its global enterprise revenues although wholesale revenue declined by 8.9 percent to $1.86 billion.

Despite the losses, Verizon said it expects improvement in wire-line margins over the year because of repositioning its enterprise offers. Overall in Q1 2012 the company’s revenues rose 4.6 percent to $28.2 billion and its operating profits improved to $5.2 billion from last year’s $4.5 billion.

Be the first to comment - What do you think?
Posted by admin - May 7, 2012 at 4:15 pm

Categories: FiOS, Internet News, Verizon, Wireless Tags: Earnings, fios, Verizon, Wireless

Verizon Offers Asset Sale for Approval on Cable Airwave Buy

Last week Verizon Wireless offered to sell off a few of its assets in exchange for a regulatory approval its $3.9 billion purchase of wireless spectrum from a group of cable television companies.

The carrier, which is the largest internet service and solutions provider in the U.S said that it is willing to sell some of its 700 megahertz spectrum or airwaves if the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission approve the cable deal.

The company has encountered stiff resistance to its cable deal from rivals like Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile USA and consumer watchdog groups who believe that Verizon would capture too much market power. Last year AT&T was also willing to sell some assets in its $39 billion to acquire T-mobile but was prevented as it raised concerns over reduced competition.

Verizon’s 700 megahertz spectrum was brought in the FCC sponsored auction in 2008. A spokeswoman for the carrier said that Verizon hadn’t used its spectrum and it would prefer using the cable spectrum to build its high speed Verizon mobile broadband network also known as 4G LTE. Robin Nicol, the spokeswoman also said that if the cable deal was opposed by regulators, Verizon would need to supplement its existing spectrum with another spectrum. She also added that the offer of selling 700 megahertz spectrum wasn’t made after its negotiations with FCC regulators. FCC has declined to comment on this.

Verizon Wireless added that the 700 megahertz spectrum offer also depended on regulatory approval for a spectrum swap deal with Leap Wireless. Through this deal Leap would provide Verizon a spectrum license covering 18.7 million Americans and in return Verizon would give Leap some Chicago area licenses covering around 11 million users.

Carriers are fighting for spectrum licenses as demand for downloading videos, pictures and music from users could leave them with a crippling spectrum shortage.

Be the first to comment - What do you think?
Posted by admin - May 7, 2012 at 4:05 pm

Categories: 4G, At&t, FCC, Internet News, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Tags: At&t, FCC, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon

Verizon Reports Q1 Earnings: Revenues up 4.6%, 3.2 Million iPhones Sold

3.2 Million Verizon iPhones Sold

Verizon Reports Q1 Earnings: Revenues up 4.6%, 3.2 Million iPhones Sold

Last week Verizon Communications reported its first quarter earnings. The revenues were up 4.6 % to $28.2 billion for the same quarter last year. The company had added 193,000 Verizon Internet FiOS connections and 180,000 FiOS TV connections. It now has a customer base of over 5 million FiOS Internet subscribers.

Verizon Chairman and CEO, Lowell McAdam said that the company delivered double digit earnings growth and strong cash flow in this quarter. The momentum was built in 2011 and the company continued to perform well in key growth areas of business. Verizon wireless showed great growth and margins and the company produced another great quarter of FiOS growth. The company expects to concentrate more on FiOS growth in the next two quarters and gradually withdraw DSL services in markets where FiOS is well established.

He was confident that the company will improve the wire-line margins in the full year. Verizon’s repositioning of its enterprise solutions had leveraged its strengths in high growth markets and the company expects its enterprise business to become an even bigger contributor in overall wireline profitability and growth in the long run he added.

Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of Vodafone and Verizon Communications. It saw an increase of 7.7% year on year increase in service revenue in the quarter. Verizon said that it sold 3.2 million iPhones in the quarter. There was also an 8.9% increase in retail service revenues which according to the company is the highest growth it has seen in past three years. The data revenues increased by 21.1%. The company also saw net additions of 734,000 retail customers for the quarter which also include an addition of 501,000 retail postpaid customers. The company’s customer churn remained low at 0.96%. The company’s total customer base stands at 88 million retails postpaid customers and 93 million retail customers.

Be the first to comment - What do you think?
Posted by admin - May 3, 2012 at 11:24 pm

Categories: FiOS, Internet News, Verizon, Wireless Tags: Earnings, fios, iPhone, Verizon

AT&T Expands Mobile Internet Wireless Capacity in Macomb County

AT&T Expands Michigan Mobile Internet Wireless Capacity

AT&T Expands Mobile Internet Wireless Capacity in Macomb County

Michigan Wireless Broadband customers in three Macomb counties of Clinton, Macomb and New Baltimore are expected to experience the better mobile Internet and wireless Internet coverage and voice performance as a result of AT&Ts ongoing investment in regional. The company last week announced that it had completed a key initiative in its continued efforts for better wireless capacity in these areas.

Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel said that with AT&Ts additional investment, Macomb County along with entire Metro Detroit area would be better connected. Expansion of hi speed Internet and voice coverage provides job makers the necessary tools to infuse new vigor in the economy and gives the residents the chance to stay connected with the rest of the world he added.

President of AT&T Michigan, Jim Murray said that AT&Ts goal is to provide an extraordinary experience to its customers and the Macomb County initiative is part of the goal to invest in local wireless networks. This is part of the AT&Ts strategy of developing its network in more areas and providing mobile broadband and Internet services to large communities.

AT&T’s network enhancements in the Macomb County region provides new frequency layers for better managing demand for mobile Internet services by allocating additional network resources.

The AT&Ts mobile Internet network uses 3^rd generation partnership project family of technologies which includes UMTS and GSM, which are most widely used platforms globally. Amongst all the carriers in the U.S. AT&T have the best international coverage with access to voice services in over 225 countries and data services in over 200 countries.

With over 30,000 hot spots, AT&T manages the biggest Wi-Fi network in the U.S. With roaming agreements it provides access to over 225,000 global hotspots. Most AT&T Smartphone users can access the entire Wi-Fi network in the country with no additional cost. Also Wi-Fi usage doesn’t count towards the user monthly wireless data plans.

Be the first to comment - What do you think?
Posted by admin - May 3, 2012 at 11:16 pm

Categories: At&t, Broadband, Michigan, Wireless Tags: At&t, Broadband, Michigan, Wireless

AT&T Wins 4G Crown: WiMAX Worse Than 3G

In the latest survey published by PCWorld magazine last week, AT&T was then named as the best 4G carrier and T-Mobile USA the best 4G carrier beating rivals like Verizon and CenturyLink. The survey also highlighted that WiMAX was falling way behind its LTE rivals.

The survey found that amongst all wireless carriers AT&T had the best download speeds although Verizon’s LTE service did score better for upload speeds. In the 3G category, T- Mobile USA’s HSPA + 21 Mbps which in fact the carrier markets as 4G staved off stiff competition from its rivals.

T- Mobile USA’s HSPA + 42 Mbps fared surprisingly well against established 4G providers. The survey found out that the carrier’s plans were more transparent, cheaper and flexible as compared to other carriers surveyed.

Verizon was the first to offer LTE services but due to this download speeds with Verizon’s LTE are slower than AT&T which started its LTE service much later. 3G speeds aren’t showing any improvement compared to previous years with Verizon’s focus being primarily on increasing next gen coverage. That has helped the carrier in terms of service accessibility. Its 4G service is more accessible than its competitors.

WiMAX has started showing its age. It was the first to announce the 4G label but it fared even worse than its 3G service providing rivals in most cities covered under the survey.

PCWorld drew its conclusions from the survey with a suggestion for users who frequently download to check for coverage maps for Verizon and AT&T and opt for AT&T if they have coverage in their area as it has better download speeds than any internet service provider in the U.S. Uploaders can use Verizon’s service for its fast upload speed. In terms of cheap billing Internet subscribers can switch to T-Mobile USA which has more convenient billing plans.

Be the first to comment - What do you think?
Posted by admin - May 3, 2012 at 12:00 am

Categories: 3G, 4G, At&t, CenturyLink, Internet News, T-Mobile, Verizon, WiMax Tags: 3G, 4G, AT&T, Verizon, WiMax

Verizon Stops Selling DSL in Fiber Markets, Eyes More FiOS Price Hikes

Verizon Stops Selling DSL in Fiber FiOS Markets

Verizon Stops Selling DSL in Fiber Markets, Eyes More FiOS Price Hikes

According to Verizon Communications CFO, Fran Shammo, Verizon will be aiming to improve its wire-line unit’s profitability by no longer selling Verizon DSL over copper in areas where FiOS is available and hiking the price of FiOS bundles in the next two quarters.

In the first quarter of 2012, Verizon added 193,000 FiOS Internet and 180,000 TV subscribers but it also lost 89,000 DSL subscribers and 440,000 voice connections. Shammo supported Verizon’s plans to migrate from copper to fiber in FiOS markets as a way of providing long term benefits in operating costs. He said that in the long term it is better to take most of these customers from Verizon’s copper network to FiOS network. The benefit would be a decrease in the repairs and maintenance over time and an increase in the upselling capacity as these customers are included in the FiOS network and then in the linear TV product offered by Verizon. In the trials conducted by Verizon last year where it had migrated customers from copper to fiber, the company is beginning to see a 30% sale upgrade on those customers.

Bill Kula, Verizon’s spokesman said that for customers who are price sensitive and want to manage their monthly broadband expenses in FiOS only areas, the company offers a 3 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up FiOS Internet for $39.99 per month on a one year contract standalone basis.

On the other hand Verizon is raising the lease fees for FiOS TV DVRs by 6% in the New York metro area from $15.99 to $16.99 per month and the set top box rates by 17% to $6.99 monthly.

Shammo added that during the next two quarters Verizon would hike prices of several FiOS packages and rebundle certain packages to make them more profitable depending on the tier consumers pick.

At&t recently also started switching all of their At&t DSL customers to their fiber optic U-Verse product. We wrote about this in a earlier ISP 1 blog post. At&t Forcing DSL Customers To U-Verse – http://isp1.us/blog/att-forcing-dsl-customers-to-u-verse/

The very active At&t post has dozens of comments from former At&t DSL customers.

Be the first to comment - What do you think?
Posted by admin - May 2, 2012 at 11:16 pm

Categories: At&t, DSL, Fiber Optic, FiOS, U-Verse, Verizon Tags: AT&T U-Verse, DSL, fiber optic Internet, Verizon FiOS

Internet Service and TV Service Providers Earn Poor Customer Experience Ratings, According to New Temkin Group Research

Internet Service

Internet Service and TV Service Providers Earn Poor Customer Experience Ratings, According to New Temkin Group Research

Temkin Group has published its latest report and Temkin Experience Ratings covering 206 big companies from 18 diverse industries. This is the second consecutive year when Temkin has come out with the ratings.

The research was based on a survey covering 10,000 consumers in the US in January 2012. The survey covered 11 Internet service providers including Verizon, Road Runner Internet, Qwest, MSN, EarthLink, Cox Communications, Comcast, Charter Communications, Cablevision, AT&T and AOL and 10 Television service providers including Verizon, Time Warner Cable, Optimum/ Cablevision, Dish TV, DirecTV, Cox Communications, Comcast, Charter Communications, Bright House Networks and AT&T

The study compared 21 organizations from both Internet and cable space only three of them received OK rating. Cablevision (Internet), Dish Network (TV) and Bright House Networks (TV). Fifteen received poor and three were rated very poor.

The TV and Internet services were rated 16^th and 17^th respectively from amongst 18 industries covered in the study on customer experience. Only health plans scored lower than these two. EarthLink and Charter communications were the lowest rated companies out of the 206 surveyed by Temkin. Eight out of the lowest 19 were from these two industries.

Bruce Temkin, the report’s author and Temkin group’s managing partner said that terrible customer service is an epidemic with cable and internet service providers. As per the analysis of the Temkin group, TV services had a modest increase in customer service experience while Internet services scored slightly less as compared to 2011.

Seven companies had an increase of more than five percentage points over the last year. They are Comcast (TV and Internet), DirecTV, Bright House Networks, Dish TV, AOL, Comcast and Cablevision. Cox Communications was the only one showing more than five percentage points decline.

The Temkin Experience rating taps three dimensions of customer satisfaction- functional, accessible and emotional.

Be the first to comment - What do you think?
Posted by admin - May 2, 2012 at 2:09 am

Categories: CenturyLink, Comcast, Cox, EarthLink, Internet News, Internet Providers, Qwest, Time Warner Cable, Verizon Tags: AOL, AT&T, Cablevision, Charter Communications, Comcast, Cox Communications, EarthLink, MSN, Qwest, Road Runner Internet, Verizon

More Telecoms Look to the Cloud

Telecom giants CenturyLink and Verizon have partnered with Time Warner Cable in on what is turning to be a very competitive market for cloud computing. The popular telecoms have quickly taken over cloud services and infrastructure as a service providers like NaviSite and Terremark with dreams of taking on competition from companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon. In fact many companies like Qwest Internet are already moving away from their loss making traditional services.

Experts doubt why would a business which is already happy with its cloud service provider switch to a different carrier. The answer is security, infrastructure and the possibility of a single communication platform. Bob Rosenberg and independent analyst predicts that telecommunications companies have an advantage over other cloud service providers as they have a reliable wired network. Businesses have trusted these companies for decades with their telecommunication and Internet needs. This gives them an advantage. Having trust in a provider can work in their favor. Businesses are also nervous about security when it comes to cloud computing.

Dan Bieler, an industry expert with Forrester believes that telecommunication companies have the potential to provide entire communication systems to businesses including hosting their software. This can include ERP and CRM. Plus it can offer software management, data security and other complimentary services. They can be a one stop shop for all their communications needs.

The big players have already sensed the competition in an increasingly competitive market. On one hand they have drastically reduced their prices and on the other they are expanding their services to become more appealing. Microsoft recently declared that it will expand its Team Foundation Service to provide developers the opportunity to build apps in the Windows Azure public cloud. Microsoft’s Silverlight users and Apple iO devices can now receive live content streamed from Amazon’s CloudFront.

Be the first to comment - What do you think?
Posted by admin - May 2, 2012 at 1:16 am

Categories: CenturyLink, Qwest, Time Warner Cable, Verizon Tags: cloud computing, cloud services, the cloud

New Calix Report Finds Video Streaming Drives Rural Internet Traffic

Roku 2 XS 1080p

New Calix Report Finds Video Streaming Drives Rural Internet Traffic

Calix, Inc. announced its first ever Calix U.S. rural broadband report last week. The report is based on its analysis of data collected from 45 U.S. communications service providers. This report gives new insights into Internet usage patterns and applications among rural Americans. Data for the report was taken from actual Internet traffic monitored by service providers in the U.S. for the fourth quarter of 2011. Calix will provide a similar report every quarter.

As expected the downstream traffic was dominated by video streaming and the upstream traffic by business services.

As service providers gear for an exponential increase in video traffic, it was not surprising to see this segment was the major broadband enabled application amongst the eight categorized applications. IN the networks under study, video streaming accounted for nearly 67 percent of downstream traffic and 13 percent of upstream traffic. Major content distribution networks like Akamai, Limelight and Level3 which carry video content from sites like YouTube and Netflix accounted for 80 percent of all video streamed traffic. For upstream traffic, business services accounted for 53 percent of all upstream traffic.

Other findings of the inaugural 2011 Q4 report include:

Service providers offering services exclusively over fiber optic networks saw their users generate more than 2.67 times more traffic than those who provided Internet services over copper based networks.
Top five percent of Internet subscribers from the rural networks studied consumed more than 100 GB downstream traffic per month and accounted for nearly 50 percent of Internet traffic.
Different regions in the U.S. show different Internet application use:

The West: Stream videos most then other regions,

The Southeast: Played most online video games,

The Northeast: Shopped online most heavily

The Midwest: Used business oriented services most frequently from home

Miguel Alonso, Vice President of Calix Software products division said that this type of information into the bandwidth usage trends of rural broadband networks give both Calix and the service providers a great tool for network planning and transformation products.

Be the first to comment - What do you think?
Posted by admin - May 2, 2012 at 12:27 am

Categories: Broadband, Entertainment, Internet News, Rural Tags: Calix, Internet Usage, Rural, streaming

Hughes Announces New Communications Solutions and Satellite Offerings to its GSA Schedule

Hughes Satellite

Hughes Announces New Communications Solutions and Satellite Offerings to its GSA Schedule

Hughes Network Systems, LLC, the global leader in satellite Internet services and solutions industry and a major provider of managed network and application services, last week announced the addition of Ka- band transportable satellite solutions, low cost broadband Internet access and digital bulletin boards to its schedule 70 contract with the U.S. General Services Administration.

Tony Bardo, Assistant Vice President at Hughes’ government solutions said that the government is becoming more mobile and employees require services and solutions that have the required speed and bandwidth to meet their communication needs whenever and wherever they are needed.

Hughes’s latest GSA services include Ka-band transportable satellite solutions, broadband Internet access and digital bulletin boards which help employees to share and receive information from the public or from each other at broadband speeds.

The new services and solutions under Hughes GSA Schedule comprise

Digital bulletin boards – Option of choosing either customer hosted or Hughes hosted model – solutions that will enable government agencies in delivering the highest impact and cost effective communications available.
Broadband satellite Internet access for government service plans: Hughes connect service plans are highly suited for teleworkers and small offices having one or two workers. Hughes Express service plans can cater to multiple users in medium to large size offices. The download speed ranges from 1 Mbps for the connect and 5 Mbps for the Express plan
Ka band transportable – Hughes HN9500 broadband satellite router and antenna system includes flyaways and vehicle mounted kit options and service to help emergency response needs.

Hughes Network Systems, LLC, headquartered in Germantown, Maryland, are the leading provider of satellite broadband doe office and home, providing innovative network technologies for governments and enterprises globally. HughesNet is the number 1 high speed Internet service in the market with offerings suited to all budgets.

Be the first to comment - What do you think?
Posted by admin - April 30, 2012 at 11:37 pm

Categories: Broadband, Government, Hughes, Internet News, Satellite Internet Tags: Broadband, government, gsa, Hughes, Satellite