reply to discussion
Page 2 of 4 FirstFirst 1234 LastLast
Results 16 to 30 of 57
  1. #16
    Dennis Ferguson
    Guest

    Re: Verizon takes a larger share of the wireless market

    On 2008-07-23, SMS <[email protected]> wrote:
    > Dennis Ferguson wrote:
    >
    >> Note that it shouldn't surprise anyone (or be interpreted as an
    >> "iPhone effect") if AT&T adds significantly more than 1.3 million
    >> total customers in the most recent quarter. I don't know why 1.3
    >> million would be "expected". AT&T did add only 1.3 million net
    >> customers in the previous quarter, but that included a one-time
    >> not-to-be-repeated loss of 600,000 TDMA customers when they shut that
    >> network down in February.

    >
    > Did a larger percentage of those 600K customers go elsewhere?


    Larger than what? I do think that TDMA customers who thought they
    would have been served as well with the GSM service might have
    switched already, and that a quarter where you don't cancel service
    for 600,000 customers has just got to be better than one where you
    do.

    > A "normal" quarter for AT&T sees closer to
    >> 2 million customers added, if they do significantly less than that
    >> this time around then something is really screwed up.

    >
    > 4Q2007 they added 2.7 million (though unlike Verizon, a large number of
    > these were prepaid and MVNO).


    And Verizon added 2 million in that same quarter, if I remember
    correctly. If Verizon is off 25% from that high then I think it
    would not be a good sign if AT&T were off a whole lot more than
    that. If AT&T adds less than 1.7 or 1.8 million this time
    around then they've maybe got a problem.

    > 2Q2007 they were at 1.5 million additions. Since 4Q includes Xmas and
    > the numbers are higher than in 2Q.


    Is the Christmas quarter really that much better in general? My guess
    was that this quarter was particularly good for everyone else since it
    was particularly bad for Sprint, though I really have no idea.

    Dennis Ferguson



    See More: Verizon takes a larger share of the wireless market




  2. #17
    Charles
    Guest

    Re: Verizon takes a larger share of the wireless market

    In article <[email protected]>, Mark
    Crispin <[email protected]> wrote:

    > That assumes that a company wants to have a million fanboys as customers.
    > If each fanboy drives away an average of 5 non-fanboys, the result is a
    > loss of 4 million.


    Another troll who is a waste of time reading.

    PLONK

    --
    Charles



  3. #18
    Charles
    Guest

    Re: Verizon takes a larger share of the wireless market

    In article <[email protected]>, Oxford
    <[email protected]> wrote:

    > as they say, Verizon is doomed without access to the iPhone... this is
    > further proof.


    Better late than never I am kill filing trolls like Oxford/Moyer.
    Should have done it a while ago. Maybe these groups will be readable by
    ignoring idiots like Oxford/Moyer, Crispin and Larry who post nonsense.


    PLONK

    --
    Charles



  4. #19
    Mark Crispin
    Guest

    Re: Verizon takes a larger share of the wireless market

    The results are in for AT&T.

    As expected, AT&T added 1.3 million new subscribers in Q2, for a total of
    72.8 million subscribers.

    As with other traditional phone companies, AT&T's wireline business was
    hit hard, with a 2.6% decline in phone lines (60.4 million to 58.9
    million). This was worse than the market expected, but the impact to
    AT&T's overall profit margins was not as bad as expected, and AT&T shares
    rose today.

    As noted before, Verizon added 1.5 million subscribers in Q2, for a total
    of 68.7 million subscribers.

    The pending acquisition of Alltel will add 13 million subscribers to
    Verizon, putting it ahead of AT&T, just as AT&T's acquisition of Dobson
    Cellular One last year put AT&T ahead of Verizon.

    -- Mark --

    http://panda.com/mrc
    Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
    Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.



  5. #20
    Dennis Ferguson
    Guest

    Re: Verizon takes a larger share of the wireless market

    On 2008-07-23, Mark Crispin <[email protected]> wrote:
    > The results are in for AT&T.
    >
    > As expected, AT&T added 1.3 million new subscribers in Q2, for a total of
    > 72.8 million subscribers.


    Whew, I don't think that's good. While they don't say it explicitly
    I think their ARPU might have dropped a bit from last quarter too.

    Dennis Ferguson



  6. #21
    SMS
    Guest

    Re: Verizon takes a larger share of the wireless market

    SMS wrote:
    > Dennis Ferguson wrote:
    >
    >> Note that it shouldn't surprise anyone (or be interpreted as an
    >> "iPhone effect") if AT&T adds significantly more than 1.3 million
    >> total customers in the most recent quarter. I don't know why 1.3
    >> million would be "expected". AT&T did add only 1.3 million net
    >> customers in the previous quarter, but that included a one-time
    >> not-to-be-repeated loss of 600,000 TDMA customers when they shut that
    >> network down in February.

    >
    > Did a larger percentage of those 600K customers go elsewhere?
    >
    > A "normal" quarter for AT&T sees closer to
    >> 2 million customers added, if they do significantly less than that
    >> this time around then something is really screwed up.

    >
    > 4Q2007 they added 2.7 million (though unlike Verizon, a large number of
    > these were prepaid and MVNO).
    >
    > 2Q2007 they were at 1.5 million additions. Since 4Q includes Xmas and
    > the numbers are higher than in 2Q.
    >
    > [Removing alt.cellular.cingular, Cingular no longer exists]


    Pretty poor results for AT&T today, 1.33 million net additions, worse
    than 2Q 2007, worse than 4Q 2007, and much poorer than Verizon. But the
    numbers are misleading. Of the 1.33 million customers AT&T added,
    894,000 were postpaid, 439,000 were prepaid or MVNO. Of the 1.5 million
    net additions for Verizon, only about 300,000 were postpaid, and about
    1.2 million were postpaid.

    Of course the original iPhone was out of stock for much of the second
    quarter, and the 3G iPhone hadn't yet been released. 3Q should be much
    better.



  7. #22
    SMS
    Guest

    Re: Verizon takes a larger share of the wireless market

    Mark Crispin wrote:

    > That assumes that a company wants to have a million fanboys as
    > customers. If each fanboy drives away an average of 5 non-fanboys, the
    > result is a loss of 4 million.


    LOL, outside of Usenet, does anyone know that these fanboys exist? On
    Usenet, do they really drive away anyone from AT&T? They probably do
    have a negative effect on Apple, because without their posts and the
    replies a lot of people would be unaware of any issues with the iPhone.
    I.e., before I read it here, I simply assumed that the iPhone could edit
    Word and Excel documents, and I assumed that it had voice-dialing.

    > This is why the companies that go for iPhone tend to be the second-rates
    > in their respective markets (AT&T in the US, Rogers in Canada, O2 in the
    > UK, SoftBank in Japan, etc.). They need the surge of fanboys in order
    > to finance a build-up of their network so they can reasonably compete
    > with the top carrier.


    This is true. The iPhone doesn't exist for me, because the AT&T coverage
    in both my home area, and the places I travel to most often, is
    sub-standard compared to Verizon coverage.

    > But once that build-up happens, they need to get rid of the fanboys in
    > order to attract the more profitable business customers,


    The old AT&T Wireless and Cingular hemorrhaged business customers to
    Verizon and the new AT&T Wireless is concentrating more on the
    non-business user with products like the iPhone. The iPhone is virtually
    unusable by most businesses that need full smart phone capabilities.
    That's not to say that the iPhone doesn't have a market, just that it's
    not the business market.



  8. #23
    Todd Allcock
    Guest

    Re: Verizon takes a larger share of the wireless market

    At 23 Jul 2008 11:32:43 -0700 Mark Crispin wrote:

    > The pending acquisition of Alltel will add 13 million subscribers to
    > Verizon, putting it ahead of AT&T, just as AT&T's acquisition of
    > Dobson Cellular One last year put AT&T ahead of Verizon.



    Didn't Cingular's acquisition of AT&T Wireless put it ahead of Verizon a
    few years ago? The Dobson acquisition was only a few million customers.

    Although I really don't know why anyone cares about the "most subscribers"
    total anyway. It's not like any of these carriers grew to these numbers
    "naturally"- both AT&T and Verizon are amalgams of smaller regional
    carriers created through mergers and acquisitions, Sprint acquired Nextel,
    and T-Mobile was a bunch of smaller GSM carriers.

    We're not talking about ground-up expansions of once small mom-n-pop
    businesses acheiving national dominance one customer or store at a time
    like Starbucks, McDonald's or Wal-Mart! Any company can become "biggest"
    in their market via mergers and acquisitions...






  9. #24
    Mark Crispin
    Guest

    Re: Verizon takes a larger share of the wireless market

    On Wed, 23 Jul 2008, SMS posted:
    > LOL, outside of Usenet, does anyone know that these fanboys exist?


    The fanboys are in the Apple forums, which is unfortunate since Apple
    strongly encourages users with support questions to go to the forums
    rather than contacting Apple. This works when it's a relatively
    straightforward newbie question.

    It works less well when the user has a real bug ("Why isn't it loading my
    contacts and calendar from Outlook"?, "Why am I getting unknown error ####
    in upgrading my iPhone software, and what can I do to get it out of
    restore mode?", etc.) or wants to do something outside of the walled
    garden ("How do I get the modem to answer a data call; the normal UNIX
    method of editing /etc/ttys to start a getty doesn't seem to work?").

    The most obnoxious fanboys, however, are to be found where Apple's
    competition lurks. These are the self-annointed prophets who go out to
    convert the heathen. An outstanding example is Oxford, who relentlessly
    posts iPhone advocacy in the Verizon, T-Mobile, etc. groups and has done
    an excellent job in convincing people not to touch an iPhone with a 10
    foot pole.

    I happen to have active accounts with both Verizon and AT&T; use both
    Windows and Mac; use iToy, Windows Mobile, and N800; etc. I'm pretty well
    aware of the strengths and weaknesses of each of these platforms.
    Fanboys of any stripe are particularly annoying to me, because (among
    other damage) they tend to hamper fixes of bugs, misfeatures, and
    omissions on a platform.

    > This is true. The iPhone doesn't exist for me, because the AT&T coverage in
    > both my home area, and the places I travel to most often, is sub-standard
    > compared to Verizon coverage.


    Yup; both call quality and coverage is much better with Big Red. AT&T's
    3G network has comparable call quality, but it's only in the big cities.
    Out in the boonies, you're stuck with GSM.

    But AT&T has its uses. A 50MB data-only AT&T SIM is quite a bit cheaper
    than adding tethering to Verizon, and I own property in ex-Dobson
    territory that is not covered by Verizon.

    Also, Verizon's world phones only have GSM, not 3G, on its world side.
    So either you need a second (unlocked) 3G phone and do a SIM swap (and
    yes, there is such a thing as a Verizon SIM) when going to 3G-only
    countries such as Japan, or you have to go with AT&T for a GSM/3G phone
    with 3G in the 2100 band.

    -- Mark --

    http://panda.com/mrc
    Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
    Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.



  10. #25
    Diamond Dave
    Guest

    Re: Verizon takes a larger share of the wireless market

    On Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:32:43 -0700, Mark Crispin <[email protected]>
    wrote:


    >As with other traditional phone companies, AT&T's wireline business was
    >hit hard, with a 2.6% decline in phone lines (60.4 million to 58.9
    >million). This was worse than the market expected, but the impact to
    >AT&T's overall profit margins was not as bad as expected, and AT&T shares
    >rose today.


    OUCH! I knew that cellular and VOIP were hurting landline business,
    but not THAT bad.

    Ugh... how much longer until the amount of ILEC landline customers
    leaving will ease? Though I have cellular and VOIP, I consider those
    to be either toys or just a nice convenience.

    I'll still keep my landline, even if I drop most of the features on
    there to bring the price down. Why? For or reliability and most
    importantly, voice quality. Neither GSM or CDMA or any VOIP codec can
    sound as well as a landline. They've come close in recent years, but
    still don't sound as good as a traditional landline.




  11. #26
    Kevin K
    Guest

    Re: Verizon takes a larger share of the wireless market

    On Wed, 23 Jul 2008 01:43:49 UTC, Larry <[email protected]> wrote:

    > Mark Crispin <[email protected]> wrote in
    > news:[email protected]:
    >
    > > Verizon's pending acquisition of Alltel will add 13 million to Verizon's
    > > current 68.7 million customers, restoring its position as the USA's
    > > leading carrier with 81.7 million customers.
    > >
    > >

    >
    > I doubt it. When the Verizon bastards take over Alltel, they won't be able
    > to help themselves screwing it up with hobbleware phones and ultra-limited
    > data service. Most Alltel customers were former Verizon customers, here.
    > They fled Cellular One when GTE Wireless (now called Verizon) took over the
    > plant and tried to screw everyone with double rates for half the minutes.
    > I hung around GTE until Vodaphone came on the scene and Verizon Wireless
    > took over. The regional plans disappeared and we were forced to buy into
    > nationwide service at low minutes we didn't want and didn't need. Mass
    > churning was the results to Alltel whos system here is much better,
    > especially in the country on 800B cellular.
    >
    > The very instant Verizon tries to shove their ****ty service down my throat
    > at god awful prices, I'll flee again, even if I have to abandon sellphones.
    > God I can't stand it when someone stands right in front of you and lies his
    > ass off....and KNOWS IT!.
    >


    I suspect that many Alltel customers are not "refugees" from Verizon.
    Also, there is a lot of Alltel territory where ATT coverage is
    marginal or based on roaming anyway. There are a lot of the west
    where if I lived I would probably go with Verizon. I could do it here
    in Oklahoma, but ATT is farily good here so I stay with SIM based
    phones where I can tether if occasionally necessary.



  12. #27
    Todd Allcock
    Guest

    Re: Verizon takes a larger share of the wireless market

    At 23 Jul 2008 17:49:35 -0400 Diamond Dave wrote:

    > OUCH! I knew that cellular and VOIP were hurting landline business,
    > but not THAT bad.



    But does it really matter, since DSL represents half of broadband sales.
    Does, for example, Qwest really care if I pay them $40/month for dry DSL
    internet, (then use VoIP) instead of $30 for a landline? It's kind of like
    why McDonald's sells salads and grilled chicken sandwiches- it replaces the
    potential lost revenue of customers who don't like/want beef.

    > Ugh... how much longer until the amount of ILEC landline customers
    > leaving will ease? Though I have cellular and VOIP, I consider those
    > to be either toys or just a nice convenience.



    Agreed.

    > I'll still keep my landline, even if I drop most of the features on
    > there to bring the price down. Why? For or reliability and most
    > importantly, voice quality. Neither GSM or CDMA or any VOIP codec can
    > sound as well as a landline. They've come close in recent years, but
    > still don't sound as good as a traditional landline.



    Agreed again. But realistically it's a non-issue- the landline companies
    have already diversified into internet, VoIP and cellular. Verizon isn't
    really going to cry a river when a $30 landline customer dumps it for a $50
    Verizon wireless cellular plan!





  13. #28
    Todd Allcock
    Guest

    Re: Verizon takes a larger share of the wireless market

    At 23 Jul 2008 14:29:30 -0700 Mark Crispin wrote:

    > > Didn't Cingular's acquisition of AT&T Wireless put it ahead of Verizon a
    > > few years ago? The Dobson acquisition was only a few million customers.

    >
    > Nope. The ATTWS acquisition put it close, but Dobson brought it over.


    A quick Google search confirmed my failing memory:
    http://www.prnewswire.com/mnr/cingular/20429/

    Although Verizon has come close to toppling them, (I seem to recall them
    roughly neck and neck at 60-65 million customers in late '06 or early '07,)
    I believe Cingular/AT&T has maintained it's lead ever since the late 2004
    merger.


    > > Although I really don't know why anyone cares about the "most
    > > subscribers" total anyway.

    >
    > I agree. That comment was just to tweak the noses of the fanboys
    > who think that there is something significant about AT&T currently
    > having the "most subscribers".



    Fair enough- I wholeheartedly support tweaking the fanboys! ;-)

    Besides, it's all academic anyway- I have it on good Oxythority than in 5
    years all cellphone companies will be out of business and we'll all be
    VoIPing each other for free on our iPhones over free nationwide WiFi...

    ....and occasionally ducking so we don't get hit in the head by all of the
    flying pigs...






  14. #29
    SMS
    Guest

    Re: Verizon takes a larger share of the wireless market

    Mark Crispin wrote:

    > The most obnoxious fanboys, however, are to be found where Apple's
    > competition lurks. These are the self-annointed prophets who go out to
    > convert the heathen. An outstanding example is Oxford, who relentlessly
    > posts iPhone advocacy in the Verizon, T-Mobile, etc. groups and has done
    > an excellent job in convincing people not to touch an iPhone with a 10
    > foot pole.


    Nah, Oxford/Moyer is more amusing than obnoxious. He posts these amazing
    lies trying to goad people to respond, and he's often successful. No one
    could be as clueless as his posts make him appear.

    >> This is true. The iPhone doesn't exist for me, because the AT&T
    >> coverage in both my home area, and the places I travel to most often,
    >> is sub-standard compared to Verizon coverage.

    >
    > Yup; both call quality and coverage is much better with Big Red. AT&T's
    > 3G network has comparable call quality, but it's only in the big cities.
    > Out in the boonies, you're stuck with GSM.


    No, out in the boonies there is no GSM to be stuck with (unless you're
    John Navas with extended range GSM, LOL).



  15. #30
    Todd Allcock
    Guest

    Re: Verizon takes a larger share of the wireless market

    At 23 Jul 2008 16:22:44 -0700 SMS wrote:

    > > Besides, it's all academic anyway- I have it on good Oxythority than in

    5
    > > years all cellphone companies will be out of business and we'll all be
    > > VoIPing each other for free on our iPhones over free nationwide WiFi...

    >
    > You mean you're not doing that already?


    Only when convenient- my Windows Mobile phone, (an unlocked AT&T Tilt) can
    do Skype and SIP VoIP (I use a Voicestick account for SIP.) I've
    configured my T-Mobile service to forward to my VoIP account when
    unavailable, which gives me Visual Voicemail (unanswered GSM calls roll to
    my VoIP provider who then instantly e-mails the .wav file to my push
    account.) The added benefit of this is if I'm somewhere where I have WiFi
    but lousy or no cell service (my hotel room in Bellevue, NE last month, for
    example) I leave the phone's WiFi on and VoIP client running and the
    incoming T-Mo calls I would've missed seamlessly ring in on the VoIP line,
    and I can answer them. Sort of my "roll-your-own" T-Mo Hotspot@Home service.

    Compared to my old 200MHz OMAP HTC Wizard, which didn't have the horsepower
    to do VoIP well without potentially dangerous overclocking, the 400MHz Tilt
    hums along fine with VoIP.





  • Similar Threads







  • Quick Reply Quick Reply

    If you are already a member, please login above.