Verizon FiOS expansion is still dead while cash cow Verizon Wireless will continue to get the bulk of Verizon’s attention this year, according to a top executive.

Verizon chief financial officer Fran Shammo delivered the latest quarterly financial results to Wall Street analysts Tuesday and had few specifics about how the Cadillac of wireless carriers will handle increasingly meddlesome competition from T-Mobile, which has torn up the comfortably profitable mobile industry’s business plan and threatened to launch an all-out price war.

Verizon Wireless remains a major earner for Verizon, delivering nearly $18 billion in revenue and $8.3 billion in adjusted profitability during the last quarter alone. Verizon is relying on the quality of its network to keep customers from bolting to less expensive competitors. This month, T-Mobile announced it was prepared to cover the early termination penalty of AT&T customers ready to switch. It’s only a matter of time before Verizon customers are treated to a similar offer and that worried investors enough to send Verizon’s share price downwards even though the company beat analyst’s earnings estimates.

Clues about Verizon’s game plan for 2014 became clearer as Shammo took questions and outlined the company’s strategy.

Wireless Will Get Most of Verizon’s Attention

Again this year, Verizon Wireless will get the bulk of Verizon’s attention and financial resources. Verizon Wireless finished 2013 with $81 billion in wireless revenue — up $5.2 billion from 2012 — which represents two-thirds of Verizon’s total earnings. The wireless business has delivered a profit margin of 49% or higher for five of the last seven quarters.

Where do the increased earnings and profits come from?

“Service revenue growth continued to be driven by more customers and devices, increase of data usage, and smartphone penetration,” said Shammo. “Our Share Everything Plans are doing exactly what we expected — driving device adoption and stimulating higher usage — resulting in increases in both the number of devices and revenue per account.”

Shammo said little about the spectrum shortages Verizon claimed were responsible for an end to unlimited use data plans in favor of usage-capped, consumption-based billing. On the contrary, Shammo admitted Verizon expects to grow average revenue per account and profits on the back of usage billing as customers boost wireless data usage and have to upgrade to higher-priced plans in the future. Shammo also noted the company’s restrictions on early upgrades and charging upgrade/activation fees have delivered more revenue to Verizon and deterred customers from phone upgrades, which saves Verizon money.

Verizon Wireless customer bills rose an average of 7.1 percent during the fourth quarter to more than $157 per month.

“We have seen consistent growth in this metric,” said Shammo. “For the full year, average revenue per account was up nearly $10 or 6.9%.”

Some of that increase is attributable to Verizon’s higher cost Share Everything plans, which often cost customers more than the plans they abandon.

Share Everything = a higher Verizon Wireless bill for many customers.

“In just 18 months more than 46% of our postpaid accounts are on these plans,” said Shammo. “In 2013 we effectively doubled the number of accounts on Share Everything from 8.1 million to 16.2 million.”

In the coming year, Verizon plans to spend up to $17 billion on network maintenance and expansion, but the bulk of it will be spent on the wireless side of the business. Verizon has again cut investment in its wired networks.

Shammo noted Verizon Wireless plans to repurpose some of its 3G spectrum to 4G LTE service this year, which cuts costs for Verizon while stimulating usage which will eventually force many customers into data plan upgrades.

“If you look at a 3G usage moving to a 4G, we know that — and we have seen it in our base — as soon as you get on the 4G with video consumption and the quality of video your usage goes up,” said Shammo.

Verizon FiOS Expansion is Still Dead

Verizon has no plans to expand its FiOS fiber network beyond the areas where the company previously signed franchise agreements several years ago. In fact, Shammo is already reallocating money that in years past targeted FiOS expansion, shifting it to Verizon Wireless.

Verizon’s FiOS expansion is still dead. No plans for further expansion in 2014.

Shammo added Verizon will continue upgrading to fiber and decommission its copper network within existing FiOS areas, pushing customers with traditional landline service to basic FiOS phone service.

For those bypassed by FiOS, Shammo indicated it will be business as usual for Verizon, still selling DSL and phone service. But he hinted that within three years, Verizon might be open to selling off wireline customers in non-FiOS areas if a company approached Verizon with a lucrative deal. Verizon is under increased regulatory scrutiny in states like New York where there is concern Verizon is diverting resources away from deteriorating landline infrastructure in favor of its unregulated wireless network.

Shammo admitted Verizon stepped back from competing as hard as usual with cable competitors during the third quarter, believing consumers don’t want installers in their homes during the holiday season. As a result, the number of new FiOS customers was down from October-December. But with recent rate increases and voluntary upgrades, revenue remains up. With less than one million potential customers in the FiOS footprint still waiting for the fiber network to arrive, Shammo was comfortable stepping back from promotions temporarily.

Verizon FiOS has been highly successful for Verizon’s wireline division, now representing about 73% of Verizon’s consumer revenue. More than half of Verizon’s FiOS customers have upgraded to FiOS Quantum Internet speeds, starting at 50Mbps. With that kind of success, what holds Verizon back from further expanding FiOS? Verizon’s current CEO Lowell McAdam comes from a Verizon Wireless background and seems preoccupied with the wireless business. Wall Street is also firmly against Verizon increasing investment in fiber when diverting that spending to high-profit wireless can earn a much faster, more lucrative return.

Those lucky enough to have FiOS will continue to see upgrades in 2014. Chief among them is a new proprietary router that will assure Wi-Fi service in the home more closely matches the broadband speeds customers are buying, up to 100Mbps or more.

Verizon’s Intel OnCue Acquisition Doesn’t Mean Online Cable Competition is Coming

Despite a piece in GigaOM suggesting Verizon’s acquisition of Intel’s OnCue technology was all about competing head-to-head with Comcast, Shammo downplayed any expectation Verizon was about to declare war on  that cable company or anyone else:

Shammo

As far as the OnCue acquisition, look, the focus here is really to accelerate the availability of the next-generation IP video service which we will integrate into the FiOS video service. And really what we are trying to do is differentiate this even more so with fiber to the home versus others with the TV offerings and reducing the deployment costs. And this really accelerates us from if we were trying to build IP TV versus buying the IP TV technology.

From an FiOS customer perspective, we expect the benefits that they will have more elegant search and discovery activity and cost stream ease of use. But also keep in mind, with the acquisition of Verizon Wireless and becoming 100% ownership of that we also plan to take that platform and integrate it more deeply with our Verizon Wireless 4G LTE network. So that really was the strategy behind this.

 Verizon Wireless Has Enough Spectrum for the Next 3-4 Years

Shammo told investors Verizon Wireless has plenty of wireless spectrum to meet customer needs for the next 3-4 years, but he did outline Verizon’s short-term plans on spectrum management:

As far as our portfolio, obviously we like the 700 megahertz for the coverage of the LTE that we did. AWS is our sweet spot at this point in time, which is the spectrum that we have been swapping for [with competing carriers], so we have a very efficient portfolio of spectrum and I think we have shown through the years that we are very efficient on how we use spectrum.

Keep in mind that, as I said, we will participate in the auctions because we will need more spectrum, but right now our current position is that with the AWS that we have and that we are launching in markets that you know in New York and San Francisco, Chicago we are lighting that spectrum up. It is pretty much completed in New York. We will continue to add to that, but keep in mind though too that we will also re-appropriate our 3G spectrum to 4G.

So we will take that PCS spectrum that has been running in our 3G network — as the volume of that network continues to decrease as we move more 3G phones to 4G, we will bring re-appropriate that spectrum over to the 4G LTE. So three to four years we are in very good shape from a spectrum holding position, but we will participate in the upcoming auctions.

The median bandwidth use slowdown (Image: BTIG Research)

Despite perpetual cries of Internet brownouts, usage blowouts, and data tsunamis that threaten to overwhelm the Internet, new data shows broadband usage has leveled off in North America, undercutting providers’ favorite excuse for usage limits and consumption billing.

Sandvine today released its latest broadband usage study, issued twice yearly. The results show a clear and dramatic decline in usage growth in North America, with median usage up just 5% compared to the same time last year. That is a marked departure from the 190% and 77% growth measured in two earlier periods. In fact, as Richard Greenfield from BTIG Research noted, mean bandwidth use was down 13% year-over-year, after the second straight six month period of sequential decline.

Companies like Cisco earn millions annually pitching network management tools to providers implementing usage caps and consumption billing. For years, the company has warned of Internet usage floods that threaten to make the Internet useless (unless providers take Cisco’s advice and buy their products and services).

“Demand for Internet services continues to build,” said Roland Klemann from Cisco’s Internet Business Solutions Group. “The increasing popularity of smartphones, tablets, and video services is creating a ‘data tsunami’ that threatens to overwhelm service providers’ networks.”

Providers typically use “fairness” propaganda when introducing “usage based pricing,” blaming exponential increases in broadband usage and costly upgrades “light users” are forced to underwrite. A leveling off in broadband usage undercuts that argument.

A Cisco White Paper intended for the eyes of Internet Service Providers further strips the façade off the false-“fairness” argument, exposing the fact usage pricing has little to do with traffic growth, pricing fairness, or the cost of upgrades:

In 2011, broadband services became mainstream in developed countries, with fixed-broadband penetration exceeding 60 percent of households and mobile broadband penetration reaching more than 40 percent of the population in two-thirds of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.

Meanwhile, traditional voice and messaging revenues have strongly declined due to commoditization, and this trend is expected to continue. Therefore, operators are now relegated to connectivity products. The value that operators once derived from providing value-added services is migrating to players that deliver services, applications, and content over their network pipes.

As if this were not enough, Internet access prices are dropping, sales volumes are declining, and markets are shrinking. The culprit: flat rate “all-you-can-eat” pricing. Such a model lacks stability—sending service provider pricing into a downward spiral—because it ignores growth potential and shifts the competition’s focus from quality and service differentiation to price.

While Klemann was spouting warnings about the dire implications of a data tsunami, Cisco’s White Paper quietly told providers what they already know:

Maximum Profits

“[Wired] broadband operators should be able to sustain forecasted traffic growth over the next few years with no negative impact on margins, as the incremental capital expenses required to support it are under control.”

If usage limits and consumption billing are not required to manage data growth or cover the cost of equipment upgrades, why adopt this pricing? The potential to exploit more revenue from mature broadband markets that lack robust competition.

“In light of the forecasted Internet traffic growth mentioned earlier and competitiveness in the telecommunications market, Cisco believes that fixed-line operators should consider gradually introducing selected monthly traffic tiers to sustain [revenue], while a) signaling to customers that “traffic is not free,” and b) monetizing bandwidth hogs more sustainably.”

Cisco makes its recommendation despite knowing full well from its own research that customers hate usage-based pricing.

“The introduction of traffic tiers and caps—especially for fixed broadband services—is not welcomed by the majority of customers, as they have learned to ‘love’ flat rate all-you-can-eat pricing. Most customers consider usage-based pricing for broadband services ‘unfair,’ according to the 2011 Cisco IBSG Connected Life Market Watch study.”

Cisco teaches providers how to price broadband like trendy boutique bottled water and blame it on growing Internet usage.

But with competition lacking, Cisco’s advice is to move forward anyway, as long as providers initially introduce caps and consumption billing at prices that do not impact the majority of customers… at first. In uncompetitive markets, Cisco predicts customers will eventually pay more, boosting provider revenue. Cisco’s “illustrative example” of usage billing in practice set prices at $45 a month for up to 50GB of usage, $60 a month for 50-100GB, $75 for 100-150GB, and $150 a month for unlimited access — more than double what customers typically pay today for flat rate access.

Usage billing arrives right on time to effectively handle online video, which increasingly threatens revenue from cable television packages.

Sandvine’s new traffic measurement report notes the increasing prominence of online video services like Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, and Amazon Video.

“As with previous reports, Real-Time Entertainment (comprised of streaming video and audio) continues to be the largest traffic category on virtually every network we examined, and we expect its continued growth to lead to the emergence of longer form video on mobile networks globally in to 2014,” Sandvine’s report noted.

Sandvine found that over half of all North American Internet traffic during peak usage periods comes from two services: Netflix and YouTube. YouTube globally is the leading source of Internet traffic in the world, according to Sandvine.

An old excuse for usage caps on “data hogs” – peer-to-peer file-sharing, continues its rapid decline towards irrelevance, now accounting for less than 10 percent of total daily traffic in North America. A decade earlier, file swapping represented 60 percent of Internet traffic.

Cisco’s answer for the evolving world of popular online applications is a further shift in broadband pricing towards “value-based tiers” that monetize different online applications by charging broadband users extra when using them. Cisco is promoting an idea that well-enforced Net Neutrality rules would prohibit.

Citing the bottled water market, Cisco argues if some customers are willing to pay up to $6 for a liter of trendy Voss bottled water, flat rate “one price fits all” broadband is leaving a lot of money on the table. With the right marketing campaign and a barely competitive marketplace, providers can charge far higher prices to get access to the most popular Internet applications.

“Research from British regulator Ofcom shows that consumers are becoming ‘addicted’ to broadband services, and heavy broadband users are willing to pay more for improved broadband service options.”

Wharton School professors Jagmohan Raju and John Zhang concluded price is the single most important lever to drive profitability.

The political implications of blaming phantom Internet growth and manageable upgrade costs for the implementation of usage caps or usage-based billing is uncertain. Even the “data hog” meme providers have used for years to justify usage caps is now open to scrutiny. Sandvine found the top 1% of broadband users primarily impact upstream resources, where they account for 39.8% of total upload traffic. But the top 1% only account for 10.1% of downstream traffic. In fact, Apple is likely to provoke an even larger, albeit shorter-term impact on a provider’s network from software upgrades. When the company released iOS7, Apple Updates immediately became almost 20% of total network traffic, and continued to stay above 15% of total traffic into the evening peak hours, according to Sandvine.

Some other highlights:

• Average monthly mobile usage in Asia-Pacific now exceeds 1 gigabyte, driven by video, which accounts for 50% of peak downstream traffic. This is more than double the 443 megabyte monthly average in North America.
• In Europe, Netflix, less than two years since launch, now accounts for over 20% of downstream traffic on certain fixed networks in the British Isles. It took almost four years for Netflix to achieve 20% of data traffic in the United States.
• Instagram and Dropbox are now top-ranked applications in mobile networks in many regions across the globe. Instagram, due to the recent addition of video, is now in Latin America the 7th top ranked downstream application on the mobile network, making it a prime candidate for inclusion in tiered data plans which are popular in the region.
• Netflix (31.6%) holds its ground as the leading downstream application in North America and together with YouTube (18.6%) accounts for over 50% of downstream traffic on fixed networks.
• P2P Filesharing now accounts for less than 10% of total daily traffic in North America. Five years ago it accounted for over 31%.
• Video accounts for less than 6% of traffic in mobile networks in Africa, but is expected to grow faster than in any other region before it.

A Wall Street analyst has urged Time Warner Cable’s competitors to deny promotional pricing to new customers switching providers because of the CBS blackout.

“While Time Warner Cable’s competitors appear to be resisting predatory marketing campaigns to take advantage of the CBS blackout, at least so far, we believe they need to go even further to cause real industry change,” wrote BTIG Research’s Richard Greenfield. “While TWC’s competitors cannot stop consumers from switching their video service provider due to the loss of CBS, they could make it less appealing to switch due to a programming dispute blackout.”

Greenfield wants providers to support solidarity against programmers like CBS by not taking advantage of the situation to poach subscribers away from Time Warner with attractive promotional packages and pricing. He believes it will ultimately lead to lower prices for consumers.

“The only way to begin to shift leverage in these content negotiations is for [providers] to start supporting each other in programming disputes, rather than try to steal each others’ subscribers,” said Greenfield. “We believe it would make strategic sense for all major [providers] to add a script to their website and call-center new customer acquisition process that asks whether a customer is switching due to the Time Warner CBS dispute (or whatever disputes are currently on-going in the country).  If the answer is ‘Yes’ we believe that consumer should not be offered promotional pricing and should be informed that these types of disputes are becoming a problem for all video providers — essentially teaching consumers that ‘switching won’t help’ during these short-term programming battles.”

DirecTV is among the first to express solidarity with its cable competitor, issuing a statement last weekend:

DirecTV has certainly had its share of these battles, so we applaud Time Warner Cable for fighting back against exorbitant programming cost increases. We are also appalled to learn that CBS is now punishing DirecTV customers, who may happen to have Time Warner as their Internet provider, by denying them access to CBS content online.

Greenfield’s suggestion essentially asks that cable operators and telephone companies agree not to compete. His idea also penalizes consumers caught in the middle of programming disputes that customers ultimately pay for in the form of higher bills. We think it comes dangerously close to illegal, anti-competitive behavior. Even Greenfield seems to understand his suggestion comes close to the line.

“It is obviously illegal for MVPD’s to collude,” Greenfield concludes. “However, it is not illegal for each to do what is right for the future of their business, even if it means passing on short term opportunity.  Tacit cooperation is the best strategy we see available, barring government intervention.”

What is right for business is not right for consumers. Stop the Cap! strongly recommends those signing up with a competitor over programming blackouts avoid explaining their reasons for switching. As well as being none of their business, being candid could cost consumers valuable money-saving discounts and promotions that other new customers receive.

We believe the most effective “game-changer” in the fight between providers and broadcasters demanding 600% rate increases for programming available for free on any television is technology like Aereo, which picks up over-the-air stations with dime-sized antennas and provides customers with online streams of those channels. This technology, if found legal, could eventually be adopted by cable operators to avoid retransmission consent payments altogether or use as effective leverage in negotiations. Aereo is a win-win for providers and consumers. Telling providers to deny consumers new customer pricing just because someone wants to get missing programming back is not.

We’d remind Greenfield of this universal truth: cable bills never go down unless a customers downgrades or threatens to leave.

Triplett

Anthony Triplett used his job as a Comcast subcontractor to hunt for unsuspecting female victims while installing cable service — customers he would later return to rape and strangle.

On Friday, a Cook County judge sentenced the murderer to life in prison.

Judge Kevin Sheehan agreed with prosecutors who called Triplett both a sociopath and a psychopath, treating his victims with all the reverence of a used facial tissue.

Sheehan said Triplett’s defense was ludicrous, calling it a “wicked web of lies.”

“You were dancing like an ant on a sugar cube,” Sheehan said.

Triplett was found guilty of raping and strangling 23-year old Polish immigrant Urszula Sakowska,  whose lifeless body was found in a bathtub inside her Chicago-area home back in 2006.

Triplett is also facing charges in the death of 39-year old Janice Ordidge, a Comcast customer in Hyde Park.

Victims’ families say Comcast has a lot to answer for after subcontracting cable work out to Premier Cable Communications, a third-party company accused of maintaining shoddy hiring practices. Comcast is under scrutiny for doing nothing to stop Triplett after being informed he was being questioned by police in the death of Ordidge.

Both Comcast and Premier are being sued for allowing Triplett to continue working, which lead to his encounter with Sakowska.

Assistant State’s Attorney Brian Sexton said Triplett “obviously could not help himself” from committing the sexual assaults and killings.

“This is the most dangerous individual you will ever see in this courtroom — and that’s saying a lot for 26th Street,” Sexton told the judge, calling Triplett “every woman’s nightmare.”

“This is who you killed!” he shouted at Triplett while holding a photo of Sakowska.

Sakowska’s fiancé, Grzegorz Magiera, said he will never recover from her loss, which would have never happened had she not called Comcast.

“I can still see her in our house, smell her and feel her warm embrace,” Magiera said in a victim impact statement read by prosecutors. “My life will never be the same as it was before. No one will ever be able to replace my Urszula. She was my one and only. She was my angel.”

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WLS Chicago Comcast Killer Sentenced to Life 7-19-13.mp4[/flv]

WLS reports Comcast-contracted cable repairman Anthony Triplett was found guilty of rape and murder and is yet to face murder charges in a second case. Triplett used his “house calls for Comcast” as a hunting ground for female victims. (2 minutes)

Verizon Wireless and AT&T could cooperate to allow both companies to build market power in the United States and abroad with a buyout of Vodafone, now a part-owner of Verizon Wireless.

The world’s second largest wireless service provider (behind China Mobile), Vodafone could be subject to an American takeover if the two largest phone companies in the United States structure the deal together.

Bank of America-Merrill analyst David Barden suggested AT&T could buy Vodafone’s international assets at an estimate price of $70 billion, allowing Verizon to buyout Vodafone’s 45 percent stake in Verizon Wireless.

Barden warned the deal would be time-consuming, and likely attract strict scrutiny from regulators both at home and abroad, but a deal would give Verizon its desired full control of its domestic wireless operation and allow AT&T to become a major global player in the wireless marketplace in Europe, Asia, Oceania, and the Middle East.

An analyst from RBC made news last week suggesting AT&T could be amenable to selling its non-core assets to raise cash, including the sale of its wireless broadcast and cell towers — money that could be used to help pay for such a deal.

AT&T spokesman Brad Burns declined to comment specifically on the speculation by RBC, but admitted, “if we wanted additional flexibility, that could be an option for us.”

“In all cases, our decisions are driven by what’s right for the company and for our shareowners, so in that sense, nothing’s off the table,” Burns said. “But any comments by analysts about potential sales are simply speculation.”

AT&T achieved record cash flows in 2012 and will likely end 2013 with $14 billion in free cash, which could be used in an acquisition strategy or returned to shareholders.

Fran Shammo, chief financial officer of Verizon, noted the company has been interested in taking full control over its wireless division for some time.

The estimated cost of buying out Vodafone’s U.S. share is around $115 billion.