AT&T beat earnings per share estimates, but showed slowing growth in their postpaid segment. Down over7% today, VZ down over 3%.
What do you predict will happen when we report earnings?
5 replies (most recent on top)
Charter Spectrum is going to have an amazing Q1. Verizon not so much.
A business is only as healthy as their wireline segment(s). Without tariff-free Tier 1 transport to connect to the rest of the world, a wireless company solidifies itself as a CLEC/MVNO in any territory in which it must purchase fiber backhaul from another carrier.
Wireless evolved so quickly and is so capital intensive (our insistence that “touch every tower” is better) that we still carry rollover debt from previous generations of radio we are already talking about decommissioning.
To gauge the health of a carrier, think of what would be left if we pretended wireless didn’t exist.
- AT&T is in bed with the government, and can basically demand a contract and get it. It has exclusive access rights to provide services that no other telco was ever offered (things that were a geographical monopoly at the TIME (pre-VoIP / over the top services) and haven’t changed since. Every military DSN number is owned by AT&T and has never been ported.
- Verizon would be a lot smaller, and a different company completely, but still has physical last-mile plant in several states where they are the ILEC.
- TMO/DT having an almost entirely if not entirely wireless portfolio in the US, would simply cease to exist.
“What do you predict will happen when we report earnings?”
More RIFs and outsourcing
End
TMo will have eaten our lunch even more than ATTs
I think it'll be a Rocky 3 moment -
where Clubber Lang is asked for his prediction -
and he responds with one word:
"Pain."