AT&T & Verizon admit defeat.
- AT&T and Verizon’s failure to differentiate themselves through media consumption is a stark warning to all telco operators that they need to do something very special in order to avoid being packet pushers.
- First, it was Verizon that decided that it was unable to make a go of its 3rd rate media assets and sold them to Apollo which somehow thinks that it can do better.
- This did not come as a huge surprise as the current CEO of Verizon comes from a company that also struggled with media and eventually returned to its roots of selling the equipment for pushing packets.
- Verizon had already written down the majority of the goodwill attached to these assets and took a further hit when it agreed to sell 90% of these assets to Apollo for $5bn.
- Verizon failed because it lacked the depth of management to turn these assets around as well as I suspect the will of its senior executives.
- Then on Monday, AT&T announced that it would spin off its media a mere three years after paying $109bn to acquire Time Warner and saddling itself with mountains of debt.
- AT&T’s media assets will be combined with Discovery to create a separate entity of which the vast majority of the shares will be distributed to existing AT&T shareholders.
- However, AT&T wants to paint this, there is no way to escape the fact that this is an embarrassing about-face in terms of strategy and that AT&T shareholders have been paying the price for poor execution on media since 2014.
- I think that only the very high dividend yield has supported the valuation of this company.
- It is clear that both Verizon and AT&T will now focus on delivering the fastest, most reliable, and cheapest mobile network available and will compete purely on this basis.
- In effect, they are becoming commodity packet pushers and all other telcos should look at these events to decide what strategy suits them best.
- I have advocated for more than 15 years that a telecom operator has one of two strategic paths to go down.
- First, packet pusher: Here the telco focuses on being the fastest, most reliable, and cheapest provider of connectivity.
- There is some differentiation to be had by combining fixed, mobile, and maybe content connectivity but in the end, it will always come down to price.
- This means that the telco must also be the lowest-cost provider of packets as it will always be forced to compete on price.
- Scale will also be a factor here as operating leverage will also be a factor in determining profitability.
- I have always believed that this is the default route that a telco will be forced to take unless it is capable of doing something different.
- Second, Differentiation: This is where the operator decides to try and add value to its packets through the provision of services that are exclusive to its network.
- Assuming that the service is popular, then the operator would be able to charge a premium price for its packets as users would be willing to stay in order to get access to the other services.
- There are many variations of this strategy, the latest one being AT&T and Verizon’s attempts to compete in the digital media bonanza.
- Operators have also tried custom phone software, digital services, digital assistants, and so on but with very little success to date.
- The latest events are yet another example of how hard it is for telecom operators to break out of their connectivity mold.
- There are many examples of how not to execute the differentiation strategy, and so far, no one has really worked out how to compete on this basis.
- With the biggest operators who have the most resources now admitting defeat, the hill for the smaller operators to climb now appears to be much higher.
- However, the smaller operators can be more nimble and take more risks so it is not impossible that we finally see some innovation in this sector.
- I have been holding AT&T for its dividend and for the potential for it to take a bite out of Netflix, but I have sold it as my reason for holding it has now evaporated.
