The old contract will go back into effect Tuesday, while negotiators continue to work towards a new resolution, said Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America, which represents about 35,000 Verizon employees. He said workers were willing to return because the company seemed ready to negotiate.

“The strike was about the process. We are now convinced that a change to the process is possible,” Mr. Cohen said. “The risk of going back to work while negotiating this is worth it to us.” He said talks would resume late next week.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

While most of the 45,000 Verizon workers who were on strike for a fourth day Wednesday are employed by the company’s land-line business, a tiny portion—less than 0.2%—are part of its Verizon Wireless operations, a legacy from a merger 15 years ago. These employees, who are the only unionized workers at the wireless arm, are part of the striking Communications Workers of America union but are negotiating separately with the company.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Most of the workers — represented by the Communications Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers—are in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions and handle the wireline side of Verizon’s business, which faces continuing revenue declines as cable companies poach landline customers and consumers switch to cellphones.

Both sides plan to continue talking but also have prepared themselves for a stoppage. The CAW — the larger of the two Verizon unions — has set up a contingency fund of more than $400 million for the strike, according to union officials. Verizon, meanwhile, has been training nonunion managers to handle customer service calls and network repairs and maintenance.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

CWA Local 1103 President Joseph Barca, who represents about 1,000 Verizon workers near Port Chester, N.Y., said he believes workers are headed for a strike unless there is a major change in the tone of negotiations.

“I don’t remember us ever being this far apart,” said Mr. Barca, a 42-year veteran of the company. “This feels a lot like 2000 and that was terrible.” In 2000, the last time workers went on strike, more than 86,000 unionized telecom workers walked off the job for 18 days.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

“We will probably do that in the mid-summer time frame,” Shammo said during a Morgan Stanley investor conference, according to Reuters.

A Verizon Wireless representative was not immediately available for comment. However, Verizon has always said the $30-per-month unlimited option was a limited-time offer as the carrier moves toward tiered-data pricing.

AT&T initially offered unlimited data for the iPhone, but dropped the plan in favor of tiered pricing. Those with the unlimited plan were allowed to keep it, however. It is not clear whether Verizon will extend the same option to its customers.

Shammo also hinted that a second Verizon iPhone could come this year in answering a question on how the Apple phone affects profit margins.

“There could be some (margin) lumpiness when you launch the phone,” the CFO said, again according to Reuters. “If there happens to be a new one that comes out, that quarter might not look so good (either).”

The numbers themselves were lackluster, with Verizon Communications reporting per-share earnings, excluding pension and other items, of 54 cents on revenue of $26.4 billion. The earnings were a penny short of expectations, Bloomberg said, with revenue about in line with what analysts predicted. After initially dipping, Verizon shares were trading recently at $36.35, up about 3 percent.

Once again, though, much attention focused on the Verizon iPhone, which goes on sale next month.

Ahead of the company’s earnings conference call, Verizon Chief Operating Officer Lowell McAdam told The Wall Street Journal that the company would offer a $30 unlimited data plan, similar to what it offers for other phones.

“I’m not going to shoot myself in the foot,” he told the Journal. AT&T used to offer a similar plan, but switched to usage-based pricing for new customers last year; plenty of the subscribers that Verizon is courting, however, have been able to keep their unlimited plan with AT&T.

Verizon has announced it will sell the iPhone at prices similar to what AT&T charges for the iPhone, so its service pricing has been one of the big remaining unknowns. Verizon is also likely to charge an extra fee for customers who want to take advantage of the device’s ability to act as a wireless hotspot. AT&T’s iPhone doesn’t have such a feature.

The iPhone also impacted Verizon in other ways last quarter, McAdam said, noting that it appeared to hold back subscriber growth, although the company did add some 870,000 new customers.

“It wasn’t what I hoped it would be,” he told the Journal.

Verizon’s earnings report suggests an opportunity to sell some iPhones to its existing customer base; only about a quarter of its contract subscribers have smartphones.

The company said it expects that, with the addition of the iPhone and devices running on its new LTE network it expects that number to roughly double this year, with smartphone penetration accounting for more than half of customers by year-end.

PREVIOUSLY:

• Verizon to iPhone Users: You Will Buy The $30-Per-Month, Unlimited Data Plan and You Will Like It
• Verizon iPhone to Debut With Unlimited Data Plan

FCC Chief of Staff Edward Lazarus, in a statement, said the effort “has been productive on several fronts, but has not generated a robust framework to preserve the openness and freedom of the Internet.” He added, “all options remain on the table as we continue to seek broad input on this vital issue.”

The agency yanked the plug on the private negotiations a day after news broke that Verizon Communications Inc. (VC) and Google Inc. (GOOG) had reached a separate agreement which would allow the phone giant to prioritize some broadband traffic. The companies have not announced the agreement yet.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

A group of pay-TV operators, including Time Warner Cable Inc. (TWC), Dish Network (DISH) and Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ), filed a petition Tuesday asking the Federal Communications Commission to change its rules to require arbitration and prevent broadcasters from pulling their signals during fee negotiations. The issue also could come up at a Capitol Hill hearing Thursday.

Several TV providers also sent a letter to influential members of Congress Tuesday, asking them to “carefully examine the circumstances that have resulted in the current imbalance in retransmission consent negotiations.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The speech was delivered on the same day that 30 business investors in technology companies sent a letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski praising the rules.

In a speech before the SUPERCOMM 2009 conference in Chicago, Mr. Seidenberg said it would be a “mistake, pure and simple” for the FCC to impose a “burdensome regime” of regulation on the Internet, particularly if the rules apply only to Internet service providers like Verizon and not Web companies like Google Inc. (GOOG).

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Today, three of Verizon’s most significant divestitures are either in bankruptcy or near it. As they say on Wall Street, it all depends on what side of the trade you’re on.

Verizon’s former yellow-pages unit, which goes by the ungainly name of Idearc, sought court refuge from creditors in May; Verizon’s former Hawaiian telecom franchise, purchased by Carlyle Group, filed for bankruptcy in December, and FairPoint Communications, which absorbed landlines from Verizon in a complicated divestment, is close to going under, the company said in a July securities filing. In all, these companies have lost upward of $13 billion in value and counting.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

In the past few years, the telecommunications company has been shedding slow-growth businesses as it focuses on its wireless and FiOS businesses. While the deals have served Verizon well, they haven’t worked out as well for those acquiring the assets–at least in three cases.

Wednesday, Frontier Communications (FTR) embarked on this path. The rural telecommunications operator agreed to acquire 4.8 million access lines in 14 states from Verizon in a deal valued at $8.6 billion. Will Frontier face the same fate? Perhaps not.

“The problems with those deals had nothing to do with Verizon or how the deals were structured. The companies had operational problems after the deals closed,” a Verizon spokesman said.

Read the rest of this post on the original site