Verizon Regaining Subscriber Momentum, Focused on Small Cells

wants to find “the most efficient way to add the capacity that we need.” Based on the cost of spectrum in some markets, it’s cheaper there to densify the network through small cells and other build outs, he said. “Cost of densification, just like any technology, has come down,” Ellis said. The company continues to add spectrum through buys in the secondary market when it's “priced at the right level,” he said. Verizon lost 398,000 retail postpaid wireless subscribers in the first six weeks of 2017 before it launched an unlimited offering (see 1704200044). Q2, Verizon reported 590,000 postpaid smartphone net adds, with retail postpaid churn of 0.94 percent and postpaid phone churn of 0.7 percent. Ellis said it's very “confident” in low- and mid-band spectrum holdings, remaining interested in the shared 3.5 GHz band. "Verizon reignited its growth engine in the quarter," CEO Lowell McAdam said in a statement. MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett said results overall impressed, beating analyst estimates. "The meme that perhaps best captures the current investor Zeitgeist about the U.S. telecoms is that 'AT&T is playing chess while Verizon is playing checkers,'" Moffett wrote, the thinking being that "at least AT&T, with its string of vertical media moves and diversification, HAS a strategy. Verizon is, to mix metaphors, lost in the woods." But Verizon is showing it also may have a strategy, he said.