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No Merry Christmas For Verizon

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Stocks:  (VZ)(CMCSA)(CVC)

According to Barron’s, Comcast was able to raise rates for basic cable by 5.4%. The data to estimate the figure was based on a survey of several markets by Berstein Research.

So, the bottome line is that the competition from Verizon’s new fiber FiOS TV service is "restrained". In other words, the $18 billion that Verizon is putting into it fiber initiative is not scaring Comcast into rate breaks to keep customers.

Although the news is not definitive, it is hardly good for Verizon. The company’s massive bet on FiOS has to pay off within the next year or so, or Verizon management will look like a pack of fools to Wall St.

Some industry experts think that Verizon is simply too far behind the cable companies, and that, with their investment behind them and Verizon’s $18 billion being spent now, it is "game, set, match" to the cable guys.

Until the market see companies like Comcast and Cablevision offering sharp discounts on cable TV, Verizon is struggling.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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