Why Verizon Is Losing Customers

When Billshark researched speed tests on the major Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Verizon Wireless, the giant carrier, was found to perform extremely well against its competitors. And industry insiders lauded the service as well.

For instance, Tomsguide.com, a well-known online reviewing service, released test results of nine popular Wireless carriers in March. Its overall finding: “When it comes to LTE download speeds, there’s Verizon and then there’s everybody else. The company posted the fastest average download speeds in our testing across six U.S. cities, as well as the fastest average time for downloading an app. That was enough to help Big Red keep its hold on our award for the best network performance, after claiming the crown in our last round of testing.”

Yet, in the first six weeks of 2017, Verizon lost 289,000 on-contract Wireless customers, defying analysts’ expectations that it would add nearly 250,000 customers in the first quarter.

So what happened? According to a recent Washington Post article, even though Verizon usually loses cellular customers every quarter, in the past it also has managed to lure enough of them back to be able to report growth in that part of its business. Recent stiff competition from its competitors, however, not only in price but in what The Post termed “aggressive moves by smaller carriers to build out their networks,” are costing Verizon heavily.

The nation’s largest Wireless carrier has long-held that its customers were willing to pay a premium for a high-quality Wireless carrier, the paper said. But “in a recent federal auction of Wireless airwaves, T-Mobile emerged as a major beneficiary, spending $8 billion to acquire rights to radio spectrum it will use to expand its mobile Internet capacity.”

Furthermore, T-Mobile has been driving the recent wave of competition with its introduction last year of its cheap unlimited T-Mobile One plan.

In addition, brand loyalty plays a role, as fewer customers are choosing to leave their current smaller carriers for either Verizon or AT&T. This becomes significant when you realize that the cellphone market in the United States is already saturated—most people already have cell service, leaving very few new customers available to mine.

But now that Verizon has begun to see the light and has introduced unlimited data plans, it has actually begun picking up customers again. And this is good news for consumers, who will benefit not only from the lower rates, but from the option to hop on over to Verizon to take advantage of its superior service.

So the question becomes, price, or speed, coverage, and reliability? These days, more and more, it looks like you won’t necessarily have to choose. And you can turn to Billshark to help you sort out the puzzle.