Good article sums up why I dumped VZ. And oh the Lilly chick.. below it sums up debt and how VZ might need to raise prices. I just quit VZ due to their prices...
T-Mobile had the foresight to go all-in on mid-band spectrum, which offers the best trade-off between speed and coverage for 5G phones. But Verizon and AT&T pursued millimeter wave buildouts at first, which is faster but often inaccessible. To plug their mid-band holes, AT&T and Verizon spent big in 2020's C-band auction, shelling out tens of billions of dollars to acquire mid-band spectrum, but greatly increased their respective debt loads in the process. Moreover, even with the C-band rollout, each are still playing catch-up to T-Mobile.
That has left both Verizon and AT&T in a tough position. They can either raise prices in order to cover the costly 5G buildout, but that would risk losing customers to T-Mobile, which generally offers affordable plans.
In the second quarter, T-Mobile added 1.7 million postpaid customers, with 723,000 postpaid phone net additions. AT&T added 1.05 million postpaid customers. While its postpaid phone net additions exceeded T-Mobile's at 813,000, keep in mind T-Mobile is still losing some churn from its Sprint base as it shuts down Sprint's legacy network. Furthermore, AT&T appeared to lean heavily on phone subsidies, as its free cash flow fell well below expectations.
Verizon only grew postpaid phone net adds by a mere 12,000, with losses at the consumer segment offset by gains in enterprise mobility.
oilprice.com
