Another weekly update on Verizon's PR efforts to rekindle Wall Street's confidence in its FiOS IPTV service and its fiber to the home project: CEO Ivan Seidenberg talks to The Washington Post. The cost of FTTH fell by about 30 percent last year and should fall an additional 15 percent to 20 percent this year. "When it's all said and done, the growth opportunity here will be far greater than anybody is accepting at this point," Seidenberg explained. Unfortunately, he qualified that statement with visions of dwellers of fiber-equipped homes consulting their doctors via video link, telecommuting in large enough numbers to reduce global warming and other services not yet dreamed up.
Maybe giving the hype cycle a jump start sells stock, but it's not the only way. Fiber will pay for itself in the years ahead, Verizon just needs to hope its estimates of falling costs will prove true and, with any luck, conservative.
For more on Verizon's latest stand-off with Wall Street:
- take a look at this feature in The Washington Post