Verizon reports wireless, broadband growth

Verizon today confirmed what AT&T said last week – if there is an economic slowdown taking place, it isn’t having a major impact on the telecom business. And it echoed AT&T in trumpeting wireless growth as the major earnings driver, although Verizon had a positive FiOS story in addition, with rising consumer revenues as a result.

In announcing its fourth-quarter and 2007 results, Verizon officials also rebutted concerns that its DSL focus is wavering in light of its massive fiber-to-the-premises FiOS rollout. Furthermore, FiOS is helping the company reverse trends of declining consumer revenues based on access line losses, CFO and Executive Vice President Doreen Toben told analysts.

“We have made some announcements of 7 Megabit [per second] DSL, and we will roll out more of it this year,” she said. “We do think it’s important to kick up speeds of DSL.”

Toben said she is constantly evaluating various metrics for Verizon Wireless, Verizon Business and Verizon Telecom, the consumer business, and has yet to see any significant impact of an economic slowdown. Some of that, she said, is due to a change in Verizon’s structure – the company no longer has a directory business, which might feel an immediate impact of slowing sales, and many of its customers, for all business segments, are on longer term contracts.

“We have not seen a change in sales expectations through January,” Toben said. “We are monitoring numerous metrics very closely, and at this point we don’t see any significant changes. I have been looking hard at discretionary services -- in wireless, that’s ring tones, music, games; in FiOS, it’s premium channels, video on demand and DVRs -- and we aren’t seeing an impact. We went live with self-provisioning on remote, and our premium channel uptake rate has increased.”

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