While I am quite sure that some of us might not even be sure that we will be able to make it past this year into the next, companies cannot have such a fatalistic view point for two things – unless it has been financially “sick” for the longest time and has run out of reserves and assets, it should have a decent plan to get back into the black, and there are no “terminal diseases”, so to speak, in corporations as the correct disciplined approach should help sort things out. Having said that, at Deutsche Bank’s Media, Internet, and Telecom conference, we saw Verizon’s chief financial officer Fran Shammo step up to the plate to share that they have plans to offer only LTE smartphones from 2014 onwards. This move will most probably also see the start of Verizon slowly but surely reducing subsidies on devices.
The whole idea of offering just LTE-only handsets is this – Verizon has pinned their hopes on consumers to make the transition of voice calls to Voice over LTE (VoLTE) by the end of 2013, and the moment that is achieved, there really isn’t any need for the CDMA chipset within handsets. Sure, Verizon could work on maintaining the CDMA network, but majority of their resources would be concentrated towards LTE. Would you prefer to pay for an unsubsidized handset, but have the freedom to choose carriers without getting bogged down by a contract?