Lowell was a large part of the problem-
When he overpaid utilizing debt for the Vodaphone interest, the company entered the tailspin it is in. His gamble on the future of LTE and 5G was that we would be able to raise rates and charge per gb of data and as usage went up bills would be 200- 300 more.
It is when we began coming under fire by T Mobile utilizing a cost cutting strategy that we no longer were able to keep up with. It conflicted where the predictions of rates would go. Between their low prices and unlimited data, we had to pivot.
To save the stock price and numbers and conceal the true number of connections we were losing month after month and quarter after quarter and stabilize revenues, we replaced valuable phone lines with fraudulent tablet, and mobile Hotspot lines through the retail, b2b and telesales channels. It doesn't sound so bad when we only lose a few thousand lines in a quarter but if anyone peeled back the onion they would realize that VZW was a sh-t show losing 40 dollar phone lines and replacing them with 10s and 20s.
We then started this pivot looking for operational savings and nickel and diming on our employees. Changing comp plans, ridiculous forecasting, and finally straight turning over people through layoffs and making those left to pick up the slack and doing 2 or 3 positions for the same measly salary. This caused a brain drain within our operation and anyone with a brain who could do more, went to the open market. We then laid off a ton of the experienced loyal workers which caused those left to be a rudderless ship.
The pressures from T Mobile and our staffing crisis caused the debt we incurred to be a problem, so we had to double down and further gamble on an incorrect 5g strategy. We no longer could invest correctly back into the network which is our competitive advantage, and the reason we were able to charge a premium for services. We took a gamble that ridiculously fast 5g speeds would wow customers into staying. This failed on multiple fronts:
1- the technology doesn't work beyond a few feet and heaven forbid there is a wall, window or other obstruction, all that speed does not work
2- people do not care for extremely high speeds, they just want to be able to load Instagram or watch videos where ever so coverage and stability is the most important choice for consumers and most businesses.
3- we bought the wrong spectrum to accomplish the long term desires and demands of customers.
4- Business customers do NOT care about ridiculous speeds either, if it is not consistent where ever they go.
All this while between T Mobile and sprint moving plus their auction acquisitions T mobile is now poised to serve those needs our customers.
And all we do is aggravate the customers we have left nickel and diming them, as well as being super frustrating to do business with.