@M-wep
Nice try, but it won't fly. Customers still want good service when they pay premium prices. Customers don't want to talk to someone they can't understand, who has no understanding of the problem, while they read from a script in India.
Companies still need to retain the people who designed the systems and they still need to mentor the younger people inheriting the system.
The culture of absolute greed is not a good business plan -- it's a way for a business to commit s---c-de. Verizon is committing s---c-de, so those on top can line their pockets with more and more and more. It's common now, many businesses are collapsing from absolute greed and aren't planning for the future.
Companies used to have their "one-year plan". Their "five-year plan". Their "ten-year plan". Often even a "twenty-year plan" for a utility, like a phone company. They knew they had to invest for the future -- for future profit. They had to build the network -- that took a certain amount of time and money before it would start to show a payoff.
Not anymore. Greed wants more and more and more. For years Verizon has been living off the bones of past generations of investment. They boldly announce grand projects -- start them -- complain about the expense and quit within a couple of years. They have nothing planned for the future, just a pack of now aging Millennials, gaping at their phones, wasting time on dying social pages and walking into walls.
They're building nothing for the future. 5G is nothing more than a cobbled together pipe dream. The density required is already fatiguing the company. The health risks (real or imagined) will delay implementation for years.
They want coders, software designers and people people to work on interfaces to machines. The real engineers -- the people who built the machines are pushed out. When these machines die, the coders will scratch their a-- and look confused. (Then we'll need to get someone from Russia, Korea or China who can rebuild the machines.)
Twenty years ago, when everyone started using cell phones, conversations went like this: "Hey find a landline, I can't hear you on that c_appy cell phone." Now it's: "Call me back on your cell, I can't hear you on that c_appy VoIP phone". (And cell phones didn't improve.) For years they tried to get VoIP working. It never got much better. Finally they just said "screw it -- good enough". I've read the manuals -- which say, essentially -- "Keep messing with CODECs until you get one that one that is half-way decent -- and use it." The rating system for acceptable VoIP clarity is a percentage of the clarity of a landline. Then they whine that the old people who (for some odd reason) don't want what the company acknowledges is an inferior product. Old farts -- who do they think they are?
Is Verizon really so greedy that they no longer understand the value of the network -- you know, that physical thing -- that people have to actually get their hands dirty to install? Because if they weren't do damn greedy, they'd realize that's all they've got.
Software Internet phones? "The Wave Of The Future"? Sorry, fourteen year-old kids are building those with free software. What makes you think they're going to pay a greedy company $60 a month, per phone, for service that doesn't include tech support?
Every company wants to be a software company. It's easy to see why. They think cheap H1B workers and outsourcing to India is their key to untold riches. They're blinded by greed. But so is everyone else. It's crowded at the bottom.
The countries who built wealth, built it by being manufacturing countries. For example: Sand is cheap, almost free. But when you make glass out of it you can make an honest profit. We don't do that anymore. Instead we look down our long, self-righteous noses at those who do -- you know the countries who are now becoming wealthy, while America's infrastructure approaches third-world status.
But that's OK, because we have coders from India and lots of really wealthy Wall St bankers and average people who can't pay the rent. Who cares if bridges are collapsing, cities are going bankrupt and gas lines are exploding from lack of maintenance?
Verizon is becoming a dinosaur because of greedy lizards like Hans Vestberg and their "New Direction". You've got it completely backwards. Verizon's days are numbered. Take the buyout, jump ship.