Speaking at a conference earlier this week, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg signaled that he has seemingly accepted the inevitable demise of landlines in favor of cellphones. Asked when the company might stop shedding customers in the more traditional technology, Seidenberg compared the prediction process to “the dog chasing the bus.”
Verizon, instead, is apparently looking toward video as the next step in the evolution of landlines. “Video is going to be the core product in the fixed-line business,” he told the crowd. It’s a evolution that will apparently take a massive conversion to Fios. Adds The New York Times,
By converting most of its landline operation to FiOS, Mr. Seidenberg said Verizon had a new opportunity to cut costs sharply. FiOS uses the decentralized structure of the Internet rather than the traditional design of phone systems, which route all traffic through a tree of regional, then local offices.
