Verizon (VZ) and AT&T (T) have been losing land line customers for a long time now. The old customers move to VoIP from the cable companies, or they just get a cell phone and say to hell with having a phone line into the house or business.
Both companies are hoping that broadband will save their bacon, but that may be a long, hard fight with cable. Verizon only has 207,000 subscribers to TV service over its fancy fiber network. The infrastructure will cost $18 billion by the time VZ is done.
That leave wireless as the one big opportunity to keep revenue moving short-term, and, now that AT&T owns all of Cingular the battle is heating up Verizon Wireless, owned by Verizon and Vodafone (VOD) ended 2006 with 59.1 million subscribers. Cingular had 61 million.
While the US cell phone market continues to grow, it is not in the rapid ascent that is the hallmark of countries like China and India. That means Verizon and Cingular can steal share from weaker players like Sprint (S) or T-Mobile.
Or, they can try to take it from each other.
Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.
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