Verizon to slash over 13K employees as part of customer-focused mission
Key Highlights
- Verizon plans to lay off over 13,000 employees, representing about 13% of its workforce, to streamline operations and focus on customer-centric growth.
- A $20 million reskilling fund will support laid-off workers with digital training, skill development, and job placement assistance.
- The new Transformation Organization, led by Alfonso Villanueva, will focus on AI, automation, and digital acceleration to drive Verizon’s strategic initiatives.
- Verizon is expanding its broadband footprint through acquisitions and infrastructure investments, aiming to reach up to 650,000 passings annually in 2025 and over 1 million after the Frontier deal.
- The company is responding to cable competitors’ convergence strategies by increasing mobile and broadband offerings, with over 18% of its postpaid base now on converged plans.
Cable and telcos raise the convergence bar
In a new State of the market research brief, Lightwave and our sister publication ISE analyzed the convergence trends we gathered from 132 industry insiders from national service providers, regional service providers, international providers and cable operators.
Verizon plans to lay off over 13,000 employees, or about 13 percent of its workforce, according to a letter sent to employees this week.
Dan Schulman, who recently became Verizon’s new CEO, says that the reductions come as part of plans to cut costs and “reorient” the company around delivering for and delighting our customers.”
A report by The Wall Street Journal revealed that the US employees had started to receive notifications on Thursday. The company said employees who reside outside the US will be notified in the "coming weeks.”
“As a customer-first culture, we have to align our teams and resources to create new value for customers and build a faster, stronger, and more proactive Verizon,” Schulman said in his letter. “To do that, we must simplify our operations to address the complexity and friction that slow us down and frustrate our customers.”
As of the end of 2024, Verizon had nearly 100,000 U.S. employees, after cutting almost 20,000 over three years from its workforce. According to Reuters, Verizon cut 4,800 employees through a voluntary program and took a nearly $2 billion charge. In 2018, Verizon said about 10,400 employees would leave under a prior voluntary exit program.
Additionally, Verizon will offer a $20 million “reskilling and career transition fund” for workers who were laid off.
Schulman said the “fund will focus on skill development, digital training, and job placement to help our people take their next steps.”
Focus on transformation
As it moves forward with its customer-first plan, Verizon has created what it calls a new Transformation Organization. This organization will focus on how it can leverage AI, automation and digital acceleration to create new growth opportunities.
Leading this division is Albar Court Venture and PayPal executive Alfonso Villanueva, who is taking on the role of Executive Vice President, Chief Transformation Officer.
He brings two decades of global leadership experience in strategy, corporate development, transformation, data science and innovation across some of the world’s leading technology and financial services organizations.
In his new role, he will focus on driving the company’s transformation agenda across data/AI, strategy, partnerships, and supply chain.
Joining Villanueva will be three leaders who will report to him in shaping the transformation process:
· Chris Bartlett and the Strategy, Corporate Development and Partnerships team
· Mano Mannoochahr and the Data, Analytics and AI team
· Jim Gowen and the Supply Chain, Sourcing and Sustainability team
Patrick Kelly, founder, partner, and principal analyst for Appledore Research Group, said in a LinkedIn post, “This move signals a clear acceleration toward operational simplification and digital modernization.”
Converged service realities
Verizon, like its counterpart Tier 1 operators AT&T and Lumen, faces new competitive realities from its cable competitors, particularly for converged wireless and wireline offerings.
Consider the fact that during the first quarter, Charter and Comcast, while seeing a decline in broadband subscribers, saw growth in their mobile service units.
In the third quarter, Comcast Mobile added 414,000 new lines, its best quarterly result on record, and reached a total of 8.9 million lines. This growth was driven by its "converged" strategy, national internet plans, and free mobile line promotion.
Likewise, Charter saw its mobile segment show significant growth in the third quarter, adding nearly 500,000 new lines and increasing year-over-year by over 20%.
Cable’s aggressive convergence moves are creating a new reality that Verizon and other Tier 1 telcos have to respond to to retain and attract customers who might want to churn to cable.
“Tier-1 carriers are being forced to rethink cost structures in the face of intense competitive pressure from cable, MVNOs, and bundled offerings,” Kelly said.
For its part, Verizon is not sitting pat. During the third-quarter earnings call, the service provider noted that over 18% of its consumer postpaid phone base took a converged offering.
Like its fellow ILEC brother AT&T, Verizon is also narrowing wireless churn in markets where it offers fiber-based broadband services. “Converged customers on fiber have a mobility churn rate that's nearly 40% lower than our overall mobility base,” said Anthony Skiadis, CFO of Verizon.
Bulking up broadband
A key element of Verizon’s convergence strategy is broadband.
While it already has a large broadband customer base of 10.6 million, including a mix of existing legacy DSL, Fios fiber and fixed wireless access (FWA), Verizon’s pending acquisitions of Frontier and Starry give it an even larger base to pursue.
On the fiber side, Verizon plans to expand the service to more addresses. In 2025, Verizon is targeting an expansion of Fios builds to up to 650,000 passings annually. Following the closing of the Frontier acquisition, Verizon expects the combined build to be up to 1 million or more passings annually.
Schulman sees the Frontier deal to grow its wireless customer base in these territories. “This will create a significant runway to capture mobility volume from our broadband customers and cross-sell broadband to our existing mobility base, driving meaningful revenue synergies,” he said.
Additionally, Verizon is working to extend Fios into markets outside of its wireline territory. The service provider announced a commercial fiber agreement with Eaton Fiber, enabling it to offer Fios broadband to a broader base of households and businesses.
Besides its fiber push, Verizon is also bolstering its FWA reach by acquiring Starry, a FWA provider focused on serving MDUs in five markets, including Boston, Denver, Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C.
Verizon said Starry’s MDU solution will accelerate Verizon’s plan to double its fixed wireless subscribers to 8-9 million by 2028 and expand fixed wireless broadband availability to 90 million households in the same time period.
What’s compelling about the Starry assets for Verizon is that it not only deepens its MDU presence but gives it another audience to offer an FWA and mobile service bundle.
“This architecture is less expensive to build, quicker to deploy, and uniquely addresses the complexities of urban settings where we can leverage our existing fiber and mmWave assets,” said Joe Russo, EVP and President, Global Networks and Technology for Verizon.
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Sean Buckley
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