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Lowell knows his experiment is doomed. With tight competition in wireless and no new customers, churn is the only revenue and Verizon isn't looking good in the public eye right now to pull customers from other carriers. Verizon's reputation will suffer greatly with a long strike. The only leverage Verizon has is in the first five or six weeks where there is no pay and little relief from CWA for the striking workers, but that time is running out.

Contractors have turned out to be a disaster for Verizon in the face of the public. The Philippine "sweat shop" like contracting, although perfectly legal, is now a nightmare that needs to go away quickly in an election year. Of course the longer this goes and the more revenue lost, it will be hard for Verizon to convince Wall Street in the coming quarters that things are fine. Verizon stock is high because it pays a great dividend and that is why it is held mostly by retirement funds. Now, it will be equally hard for CWA to get or keep anything as a result of these loses. With competition so fierce in wireless, the revenue lost in a long strike might not be easily regained. Wireless companies (including VZ wireless) are moving to compete with wire-line services such as Fios and cable.

I'm not saying wire-line is dead like some, but it will have to compete with wireless with only half of what the others offer so they need to do it better, cheaper and faster. Cell phone usage is at a saturation point. Everyone use cell phones and the youth (the Future) get all their content through them. Now I have insight here when it comes to VZ wireless. They are moving to bypass local telco fiber and create their own backbone. You can take that to the bank. If land-line is to compete, it has to be creative with technology and use what is existing in the network to gain it's share of the crowed market place.

The plan for success is to fire everyone above the age of 40 in executive and director positions. Old thinking is not what is needed. Landline need young new technology minded people with vision. Throw in a few ivy league high level people to ensure implementation, and look out.

This strike ends before June 1st with no real winners or losers.

That's my two cents

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I agree with a lot of what you said but the technology is there for wireline to squash competition like Time-Warner, Comcast, Charter, etc but the company doesn't want to implement it. They've put all their eggs in the wireless basket but we all know that the whole market has plateaued. Everyone has a cell phone now, even your 10 year old kid and grand mother, so now it's just a war between all the carriers to cut each others throats which is being led largely by T-Mobile. There are no new customers for cell phones and the 5G network is probably going to cost more money than it's worth. They've been implementing the backbone for this by feeding fiber from outside the COs between a small cell and a panel inside the CO much the same as was done when CLECs came in. Either way it all goes across the wireline backbone.

If they wanted to save wages on FTs for the long term they could have built out the FiOS network further since once fiber is installed it only needs techs when a cable gets a backho cut generally. The whole strategy of this company is obviously short-term which really doesn't cut it for their long term viability. FiOS could be a real money maker and they wouldn't have to share any of that with outside companies.

"Once you lose a customer you lose revenue ."

Do you work for the Union? Wow, that is heady stuff. You should be a pointy headed academic. You're wasting all your intellectual talents in a union.

Get real. The Philippine call center story is a NON-STORY. It got ZERO traction.

@HuRlz1d-dlz Verizon will be closing brick and mortar stores and moving everything to online so most of the low paying Verizon Wireless jobs will be gone. The technology and IT departments will go overseas as H1b visa's become a serious issue with the approaching election. Verizon has already replace a very large number of US IT workers in Basking Ridge using lowering paying H1b workers. They get away with it by using creative wording in their job description for the vacancy that will be filled. In the long run, Verizon wireless will have most of it's employees overseas with only people that actually have to touch anything left here in the U.S. Unless things change, the only jobs here in the U.S will be those you have to physically be here to perform regardless of the industry. Technology makes this possible. Wall Street doesn't have to be in NYC and pay 52% of the tax base there, it can operate anywhere in the world. When all is said a done, none of what Verizon saves will translate to a lower more competitive price. This is the "old thinking" I was referring to. But I guess you didn't take issue with the other stuff I posted.

Once you lose a customer you lose revenue . That's 840 mil (your numbers) a year for life.

We know non union wireless call center workers are paid 50% of what the union wireline call center workers are paid. Assuming that is a 20k difference per year * 14,000 workers = $280M over market rate for the job.

If the next contract is for 3 years, thats $840M in savings by replacing those workers. And naturally, those savings continue year after year.

Just do the math - the short term pain that VZ takes from this, is to its benefit in the long run.

The only one who should be sweating are the union workers who aren't earning anything right now. The company is fine with replacing you, they're in the process of doing so right now.

Thread regarding Verizon Communications Inc. layoffs

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