Don’t call Verizon 2.0 a simple reorganization, company CEO Hans Vestberg said this week during a “Sellside Analyst Meeting.” The goal, he said, is a company-wide “transformation” that starts with the network and aligns on top of that business groups, talent, go-to-market and other strategic considerations.
Verizon will change the way it reports some elements of its finances at its second quarter earnings call on Aug. 1. Vestberg and Chief Financial Officer Matt Ellis gave an overview of the changes, how they correspond to the Verizon 2.0 strategy and fielded questions from financial analysts.
The CEO said the company will have 10,400 fewer employees by the end of the month through a voluntary program and has seen a number of high-level shifts, including the division of the company into consumer, business and media groups. Consumer covers retail and wholesale wireless and wireline and is led by Verizon Wireless EVP and President Ronan Dunne. EVP Tami Erwin oversees the Business Group, which includes wireless and wireline for enterprise, small and medium businesses and the public sector. Oath CEO Guru Gowrappan heads up the Media Group, which includes assets gained through the Yahoo acquisition, media verticals and the ad platform.
“All in all this is supporting where we want to go long term,” Vestberg said. “It’s far wider than a reorg what we’re doing right now. We actually serve all customers in the market with technology. Then, if you can horizontalize the network and productify that, and move it around, you get a lot of efficiencies.”
He gave the example of recent meetings with large U.S. enterprises; instead of selling point solutions, the internal realignment goes to customers with a “unified” offering comprising the entire scope of Verizon products and services.
And, “The first piece is of course the network,” Vestberg said. “We’re building the intelligent edge network. Think about that all the way from the data center to the edge of the network…At the edge you have options for your customers. That’s where you make the selection with the customer.”
Verizon 5G Home
Verizon’s initial entry into the 5G market was a fixed wireless home broadband service available in parts of four markets and based off the internally-developed Verizon Technical Forum standard.
In response to a question, Vestberg provided an update on what’s ahead of the 5G Home product, reiterating the ambition to ultimately serve 30 million households, which is in addition to the wired Fios service.
“We have the four cities, we’re not going to expand that,” he said. “It was limited because of the TF [standard].” Now that CPE chipsets are on track to support the 5G New Radio standard, 5G Home will relaunch this year in line with the global standard.
As Verizon builds out its mobile 5G network, live in Chicago and Minneapolis and poised for 30 cities by year end, it will also examine the fixed wireless opportunity that also rides on its millimeter wave spectrum portfolio. “Wherever we have the 5G mobility, we’re going to have 5G Home. We’re going to be even better prepared when the 5G Home comes on NR.”
