A lot of this is pretty obvious, but I'm posting them on here to revisit this topic a year from now.
1: Company will trim down and eventually shed off services that it or another company deems no longer profitable. The idea of spending on IoT, M2M, and video was a bust financially.
2: Company will sell of Wireline as it will be in bloat due to XO and other fiber assets being made available. The One Fiber debacle will probably implode or at least become exposed as a shell game fiasco.
3: Company will actually do well / same in the wireless capacity going forward. Wireless is now as commonplace as POTS was all through the early 2000s. Expect more pushes for expense trimming as products such as Visible start to become commonplace. Expect other competitors to follow suit.
4: Company will contract out and vendor source most jobs due to efficiency changes as per the current board and officer structure. This will start ramping up during the next 3 years.
5: Company will be bought out or merged with an existing technology based company. This is pretty obvious by the dividend increase without addressing debt to shareholders, the shedding of actual employees/assets, and the previous focus on overpaying and buying obsolete technology companies for their properties (AOL, Yajoo, etc).
6: Unions: The previous saving lifeline of the landline and VES infrastructure. If it wasn't for the unions, business units would've be sold off or divested off of the company's portfolio. If unions were not around, you would've seen a larger sell off when Frontier bought those markets a few years ago. The company may sell off, but unions will still be around.
7: Management: Will be severely cut due to non-growth of profitable markets and less than efficient workflows within their territories. This is what the company will stick by as their explanation when the RIFs continue.
Please feel free to add to this topic.