Verizon is working to assuage Justice Department fears that the...
Verizon is working to assuage Justice Department fears that the carrier’s proposed joint marketing agreements with cable companies will harm video competition, said Verizon Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo. “There’s angst around the competitive nature of those agreements, but ……
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we will compete in the FiOS footprint vigorously” against cable competitors, Shammo said Monday at the Deutsche Bank conference. Verizon, meanwhile, expects FCC approval in “mid-summer” on its SpectrumCo deal to acquire 133 AWS licenses. Shammo said the two deals are not related. “These are two very distinct, separate agreements. One is not tied to the other.” Shammo said the company continues to negotiate with the unions, but declined to say when there would be an agreement. The company has no plans to make a billion-dollar merger or acquisition, Shammo said. But the company could be open to smaller deals in the millions of dollars, he said. Verizon is focused on wireless, FiOS, cloud security and digital media, Shammo said. “You won’t see [Verizon] really launching into some new venture,” he said. “We're now to a point where we need to take these [existing] assets, put them together, and execute on what we have.” The carrier wants to minimize investment in 3G and move as many wireless subscribers as it can to its more efficient LTE network, he said. The 4G network has a “ton of capacity” and only 5 percent of Verizon customers use it, he said. The struggling economy has had “no impact at all” on Verizon’s consumer business, and the enterprise business is “stable,” he said. Verizon has “felt more pain” in the small-business market, where the company has not “executed as well as [it] could,” he said. Verizon probably won’t do a share repurchase this year, but it may in 2013 or 2014, he said.