Verizon closes on $1 billion spectrum buy but customers are still not delighted
The new spectrum will improve Verizon's signal in rural markets, but what about the CEO's customer-first comment?
Verizon closes on $1 billion spectrum buy. | Image by PhoneArena
Last month we told you that Verizon had received regulatory approval from the FCC to buy $1 billion of spectrum from UScellular. The deal has now closed after Verizon said that obtaining the airwaves would improve rural and indoor coverage in some areas of the United States.
Verizon has closed on the purchase of up to 75MHz of spectrum from Array Digital Infrastructure
Some of UScellular's assets were acquired by T-Mobile in a $4.4 billion deal that closed last year. Those assets included 4 million UScellular customers, all of UScellular's retail store locations, and 30% of UScellular's spectrum holdings in the 600MHz, 700MHz A Block, PCS, AWS, and 2.5GHz low-band spectrum.
After T-Mobile closed on the purchase, UScellular changed its name to Array Digital Infrastructure and kept 4,400 cell towers. Space on 2,000 of the latter was leased to T-Mobile. Separately, Verizon acquired the following spectrum:
- Up to 25 MHz of cellular spectrum.
- Up to 20 MHz of AWS-1 spectrum.
- Up to 10 MHz of AWS-3 spectrum.
- Up to 20 MHz of PCS spectrum.
Other Array assets were sold to T-Mobile
Array also divested other assets to T-Mobile, receiving $168 million. Those assets included spectrum licenses in the low-band (600MHz and 700MHz). The company said that closing the deal with Verizon and doing the divestiture with T-Mobile completed its goal of monetizing its remaining spectrum.
All former UScellular customers will become T-Mobile customers over the summer
Array's president and CEO Anthony Carlson, commenting on the deals with Verizon and T-Mobile, said the company had made "significant progress in our spectrum monetization efforts and is pleased with the value realized in this sale." The company leases its towers and made a deal with Verizon last December allowing the carrier to use some of the towers to improve its 5G network.
Verizon CEO Dan Schulman. | Image by Verzon
The UScellular customers that decided to stick with T-Mobile are now dealing with something they probably didn't think about when they were UScellular customers. Once these former UScellular customers complete the migration of their accounts to T-Mobile, expected to take place this summer, they will have to deal with the new digital T-Mobile requiring all phone upgrades, line management, bill payments and more to be handled by the T-Life app.
Which reward program should Verizon start?
Over the last five years, Verizon has returned $58 billion to stockholders via dividends and cash buybacks. Verizon's stock has returned the 24th highest amount to shareholders in history, which is quite an impressive statistic. But it does not advance new CEO Dan Schulman's reported goal to "rapidly shift to a customer-first culture, one that thrives on delighting our customers."
Despite comments made by CEO Schulman, Verizon has yet to delight its customers
Verizon subscribers I know, including myself (with over 20 years as a Verizon subscriber under my belt), have yet to be delighted since Schulman took over last year. Of course, his tenure got off to a rocky start just three months after he replaced Hans Vestberg as the carrier's CEO last October 6.
In January, Verizon suffered an outage that lasted practically all day on January 14th. As a result, the carrier offered subscribers compensation of as much as a $100 credit per line for one month.
As a Verizon subscriber, I would like to see the wireless provider offer a more robust rewards program, something along the likes of T-Mobile Tuesdays. Additionally, Verizon's perks are ridiculous compared to T-Mobile's. I can give you one amazing example. T-Mobile customers have the opportunity to snag a free seasonal MLB.com subscription valued at $150 each.
Mr. Schulman: where is your customer-first culture? When will you start delighting customers?
Verizon subscribers still are waiting to see what Dan Schulman meant when he said that he wants Verizon to have a "customer-first culture." They also are dying to know what he intends to do to "delight subscribers."
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