Good morning!
All right. Good morning, everyone. We'll go ahead and get it kicked off. I'm Eric Luebchow, Senior Analyst at Wells Fargo, covering telecommunications services, and really pleased this morning to be joined by Joe Russo. He's the EVP and President of Global Networks and Technology at Verizon. So Joe, thanks for joining us.
Eric, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
I know you have to get some safe harbor language out of the way, so we'll go ahead and, go ahead and do that.
Yeah, well, I suspect I will be making some forward-looking statements regarding future events and financial results, so those are subject to risk and uncertainty. So I would draw your attention to our safe harbor statement on the investor website.
Perfect. So to kick it off, Joe, maybe we could talk about kind of the state of your mid-band 5G network. I know that's been a big transformation for Verizon the last couple years. And you've deployed a lot of the spectrum in a lot of the denser urban areas, and you just got access to some of the B and C Block C-band markets. So maybe you could kind of walk us through where you're at in terms of the upgrade path, and what you know the next couple of years will look like as you push to 250,000,000 POPs coverage and beyond.
Okay. Before I get into the specifics on C-band, you know, I've been with Verizon 28 years, but been largely running operations, so I haven't met you or many of you in the audience, so they don't let us operations guys out very much. But in the new role, I'm pleased to represent Verizon. As I talk for the next half hour about all the different things we're doing, one of the things I wanted to make sure that I hit right up front is I think Verizon takes a unique approach to building any networks, whether it's our C-band, our millimeter wave, our Fios platform, our core, et cetera. And we're a very mission-oriented team, and I'm a very mission-oriented leader.
Our mission is to connect people, and we do that by building the best, most reliable, highest performing and secure networks. And we make tons of investments, in lots of different ways to make sure that we're the best at doing that. C-band has been a great tool in that, in that toolbox. And, as you said, we, I think, just announced we're crossing 230 ,000,000 POPs covered. But I will reinforce that, you know, POPs covered isn't exactly my goal. My goal is to get capacity and, performance into the network where customers want to use it, when they need it, where they need it, and C-band's been great.
I suspect over the next couple of quarters, we'll blow past the 250 ,000,000 POPs covered, but we'll do that in a way that our customers, you know, see the difference in performance and reliability. It's been a great tool to kind of build our Ultra Wideband network across the nation. Like you said, we started in the dense metro areas, in the top 46 PEAs. We quickly moved to the 76 PEAs, and now that we have access to all 406, we're starting to spread that C-band build out into the suburban and rural areas right now.
In terms of coverage, one of your peers has talked about mid-band covering around 300 ,000,000 people. I guess, what are the goals to drive coverage into increasing the rural areas, maybe beyond 250 ,000,000 people? Is that gonna be more on a success base, depending on use cases or opportunities you see in more rural parts of the country to deliver some of the solutions we'll talk about more, like fixed wireless?
Yeah. Our goal is to deploy C-band on our existing metro-macro network in all 406 PEAs. So that'll happen over the next couple of years. And again, we'll follow where customer demand is. So where we see we need capacity, coverage, or capabilities in the network, that's where we'll target next. And largely success in places where we think we can win share and fixed wireless access. That's another area that we'll target C-band. But over the next couple of years, we'll be rolling out into the more suburban and rural areas with the intent of really covering our existing macro network with C-band.
As you look at the performance in terms of subscribers in your C-band markets versus your non-C-band markets, maybe you could talk about some of the trends you see in terms of the successes you've had in terms of subscriber growth. Because I know Verizon does have a goal to kind of improve, especially in their consumer division, some of the net subscriber growth.
Yeah.
So maybe you could talk about the differences you see, so as you roll out more C-band, and one of the opportunities, of course, might be to improve the subscriber trajectory in the next couple of years.
Yeah. So Sampath, Kyle, and I work very closely together to make sure that we're in lockstep about building the network that they can sell, and bringing more and more capacity and coverage to customers who can be on the Verizon experience. It's one of the reasons earlier this year, Sampath and I aligned our market structure, so that my network team and his sales teams are locally operating. It's the way we operated the business several years ago. We stepped away from it, and we've gotten back to it, and we've seen great progress in our ability to grow the business as a result.
Specifically for Ultra Wideband, both for millimeter wave and for C-band, we see that customers are really loving that experience, and we see better churn. We see better step-ups, so more customers, you know, taking our premium plans because they want access to the Ultra Wideband experience. And we're seeing better gross adds in those markets as well. So we like the trajectory we're on, and we'll continue to build out, and I think that gives us more and more capability to bring more and more customers on the Verizon experience.
Okay, great. That's good to hear. So, so one of the use cases that has been adopted by yourself and some of your peers, fixed wireless, has been a bit, kind of a game changer in the broadband industry the last few years. And you clearly have brought on a tremendous amount of spectrum capacity, especially with C-band. At the same time, you know, those use cases do chew up a lot more bandwidth than the typical smartphone users, I'm sure-
Yeah.
You look at every day. So maybe you could talk about managing network capacity-
Mm-hmm.
where you have to, you know, manage the 20%-30% growth in just general smartphone usage on top of a new—a new use case that's really incremental to Verizon in the last couple of years, at least in a big scaled way.
Yeah. So when we started deploying 5G Ultra Wideband, even with millimeter wave, it became very apparent we had to get really good at managing a radio access network that was now going to be multipurpose. And you could say it was multipurpose before fixed wireless access, but it was largely low-end multipurpose, IoT, et cetera, and mobility, right? And with fixed wireless access, building the capabilities early on were a key point that we wanted to make sure we differentiated ourselves on. So we've done a lot in our organization to build capacity management tools and models that allow us to manage that RAN network in a new way. I'm very proud of the way the team has done that, and I think it differentiates us.
It gives us the ability to really maximize the spectrum we're able to put into the network and balance what customers need when they need it. The time of day is different between fixed wireless access and mobility, so having sophisticated models that, you know, maximize that spectral efficiency by making sure but making sure that our customers are getting a level of performance that we defined very early on, that said, we know we need to deliver this level of performance for mobility and this level of performance for fixed wireless access use cases, so that customers could do what they wanted to do. And then we backed into, okay, so that's how we can run this network, and every single sector is different, and we manage it differently based on the RF conditions, the user profiles, et cetera.
We really like the trajectory that we're on in managing those use cases that we're putting on the ultra wideband network.
Most of your success in fixed wireless, because of where mid-band has been deployed, has been in more dense urban markets.
Yeah.
But as you, as you broaden coverage to more suburban areas, more rural areas, I have to imagine there's a lot of competitive opportunity there, right? There aren't as many competitors in-
Mm-hmm
rural America, who are operating fixed broadband. So maybe talk about kind of the shape of the subscriber curve as you broaden the network out.
Yeah
... into increasingly rural areas.
Sampath and I are really trying to build a long-term, sustainable business here. We've said many times, I'll say it again, we're targeting around 350-400 thousand net adds a quarter, and we think we have a long runway to continue that level of performance each quarter. As we, you know, use the spectrum we've already deployed, and as you've said, start to expand into new markets, into more suburban and rural, we think that that trajectory lines up with my build plans and our capital envelope. So we like where we're at, and we think the customers are getting a great experience, and we continue to grow that business, you know, to create that long-term, sustainable revenue.
So you have, you know, 200 megahertz of spectrum in some of these rural markets-
Yeah.
Right? That's what... Well, that's a lot of bandwidth you can load on, on the network.
Yeah, definitely. And, you know, and, and that gives me great opportunity to balance, right? Because today, the mobility use cases, you know, they, they don't need that kind of throughput, so fixed wireless access is a great place. The other thing I'll add, though, is we're seeing more and more enterprises look to us to use fixed wireless access, both for backup and primary connections.
Mm-hmm.
And, you know, to your point, you know, these businesses, if they have branches all around the country, they want access to that kind of throughput in all of their branches. So as we continue to roll out fixed wireless access beyond the suburban and dense urban areas, you know, it gives us more and more opportunity to also capture some of the enterprise use cases as well.
No, that makes sense. So I wanted to touch on, on millimeter wave spectrum. You were one of the earliest proponents of, of millimeter wave years ago. And obviously, C-band and mid-band spectrum seem deservedly to get a little more attention-
Yeah
the last couple of years.
Yeah.
Just because they have, you know, slightly better propagation characteristics. But maybe you could update us on your millimeter wave network and, you know, where you're at today in terms of offloading traffic, especially for the really high bandwidth use cases, especially in dense metro areas, off of the mobile network-
Yeah
and where you're at in that process.
Yeah, and, you know, we, we love our millimeter wave spectrum. We're using it in new and different ways than we even thought of a few years ago. As you said, it's a great tool in our toolbox to handle capacity and to allow customers to do things they never could do before in certain areas. And at first, you know, we focused on venues in dense urban areas, but now we're starting to use it in many different areas: beaches, in, you know, open-air venues, in downtown urban areas, to really give customers the kind of experience that they couldn't do in those kind of... where lots of people gathered and wanted to do things.
You know, I joke with my kids more than anything, but, if you've been to a Taylor Swift concert, you know, all of those people, our customers, are there, and they want to stream that experience with their friends and family, and you couldn't do that in a 4G world. There just wasn't the kind of capacity, and we have found that we've enabled and unlocked that capability in venues with millimeter wave. There's no way we can deliver that kind of experience for our customers without millimeter wave. The same would be true at the beach... you know, if you want to stream video, play games, watch things at the beach, when, especially the Jersey Shore, I don't know about here in California, but there's thousands of people, you know, all congregated in the same place.
Millimeter wave is a great tool to meet those demands.
That's very helpful, Joe. So I also wanted to touch on your fiber footprint.
Okay.
Verizon has been building fiber for 20 years at this point, right? You were building fiber before it kind of became cool, as I like to say.
Yeah.
Really one of the first movers with your Fios network. You know, more recently, you did your One Fiber build, which was more outside of your incumbent footprint in over 60 markets. So maybe you could give us an update on where you're at in your fiber build. I think you're still building about 500,000 new Fios homes per year.
Mm-hmm.
I think you're mostly done with the core build on One Fiber, and a lot of the remaining CapEx will be more success-based, but maybe you could kind of walk us through-
Yeah
... you know, the journey, the evolution, and what the future could look like with fiber build.
Yeah. Let's unpack it a bit. I think you got most of the points already. But for those of you who may not know, Eric, you may not know, but 20 years ago, I was asked to serve on a team to try and figure out how to bring fiber to people's homes. We didn't call it Fios back then, but we came up with that name. But I take great pride in our Fios footprint. We took a lot of lumps early on for those decisions. I remember many times our CFO wondering, you know, "What are we doing?
Right.
But we have a premier product in the Northeast, and our customers love it. We have great market share, and we continue to grow that part of the business. As you said, we plan to continue to add around 500,000 customers, open for sale a year in our Fios footprint, and that's a combination of funding that I'll allocate to the team to expand beyond where we've already deployed the 17 ,000,000 that can get it, and some of the BEAD funding as well. We have several bids out in that space, and we think we could be very successful with BEAD funding as well, getting to places that we normally wouldn't have built before.
If I think out of footprint, we are largely done with our core build of the One Fiber markets, which was great timing because it allows me and Tony to bring down the capital for 2024, but not slow down on our Ultra Wideband builds. Because I could reallocate some of that fiber out-of-footprint allocation to our Ultra Wideband build and keep on pace, and to some extent, accelerate as we go into 2024 and 2025. And at this point, it's mostly where we're building new macros or small cells, and we need fiber off of the core. We'll add those tails to the core, but largely, the core is now built, so we don't have to go back and make that big investment.
It's also saved you a significant amount in backhaul expenses as well, right?
Yeah.
I think you quantified it as, you know, $1,000,000,000 plus of savings at an analyst day years ago.
Yeah. We love the owner's economics for sure. And the other thing that we don't talk much about, but you know, I guess this is my operational background, I love the operational excellence it gives me. You know, part of the places we chose were places we felt like we needed a better experience as well and to be faster to market. You know, and right now, with the fixed wireless access products, some of the enterprise use cases, you know, having 10 gig plus backhaul to these cell sites is critically important. And where I have my own fiber and I own the electronics as well, right? That's an evening upgrade versus, you know, potentially weeks or months of dealing with a third-party provider.
So, we love not only the owner's economics, but the operational excellence we get from having more than half of our cell sites on our own fiber.
Yep. Yep. If we touch on kind of small cells and densification needs over the next couple of years, you know, you've been one of the more aggressive small cell developers, you know, in, in the carrier space, especially in the more densely, highly populated areas. You know, understandably, you've probably pivoted a little bit more towards macro tower upgrades as you've upgraded your C-band network the last few years. But, you know, as we look out, you know, into the future, now that you're, you know, progressing and pretty far along the macro tower upgrade path-
Mm-hmm
... should we expect a little bit of a shift to densification, where small cells, particularly in dense urban areas, become, you know, a bigger part of the equation?
Yeah, I would. Right now, we're kind of on a steady path of adding macros and small cells to densify the network where we see capacity or coverage needs. You know, in the next couple of years, to your point, I think we have a lot of build-out on the macro mods to add C-band. That is our primary focus for our capital dollars. I'm not sure that beyond that, I see a real need to further densify. But I would say it's a watch and see to some extent, right? It's what type of new use cases, both in the enterprise or the consumer or the B2B2C, that require some form of a network upgrade that would require densification.
It's a tool that we use right now, mostly for coverage and capacity, but we definitely are starting to dream a little bit about what does the future 5G Ultra Wideband network look like? But I think it's gonna be more use case driven. That would say we have to go beyond our kind of normal cadence of expansion.
As you do look to do some incremental densification selectively, I mean, do you prefer to build on your own fiber network, or in some cases where it makes sense, will you lease capacity from a third party, like a Crown Castle or an ExteNet or someone like that?
Yeah, we do, we do both, right? There's kind of three models. You know, we if we're in our core networks or if we're in our ILEC. You know, those are the first two, where we have our own fiber. We'll use our own fiber, especially if it's close enough to the core that it makes sense. But where it's not, and in many cases, you know, a little less than half or so, we do go to third parties, and we will use them, you know, whether it's the tower companies like Crown or, you know, the Lumen or AT&T's or others of the world.
Sure.
Yeah.
I wanted to touch on kinda new 5G use cases. It's something that Verizon's talked about the last couple years, and I think you've acknowledged that the ecosystem has taken a little longer to develop than you initially thought. But it seems like a lot of the excitement is really more in the enterprise space, even more so than the consumer space.
Yeah.
So maybe we can kinda touch on, you know, enterprise 5G use cases. You know, mobile edge compute and private networks are the two that you've talked about the most, and it seems like private networks are maybe the area that Verizon's the most excited right now.
Yeah.
I wanted to get your temperature check on that.
Yeah. Yeah, I think we're seeing a few things. Number one, the private network space is really building. And the reason I say that is more and more customers that Kyle and I meet with are either have a deployment that are now coming back saying, "Hey, we didn't realize how many problems this actually solves for us, and we'd like to do more." And then by having those deployments in place at ports, at manufacturing facilities, at NFL stadiums, now we're able to also show other companies, you know, these are the kind of problems we're solving. So if you have these kind of problems with a fixed or a Wi-Fi network, you know, private networks are the solution. We've proven them out. A lot of customers are doing kinda test cases to, to, you know, check us a little bit.
But that momentum is definitely building. And I think originally, we thought MEC was kinda gonna lead and private networks would follow, and we've seen the reverse. Now that people are getting private networks, and we're solving those kind of fixed or Wi-Fi solutions, or problems that they had with a private mobile solution, they're now saying, "Oh, well, we want our data to be more secure," or, "We want lower latency," or, "We want on-prem, integration with our, you know, HR systems," et cetera. And we're building those capabilities with MEC applications, that are following the private networks. So that's how we're seeing that evolve, and Kyle is really gaining a lot of momentum in that space.
And I love just seeing the problems get solved that you couldn't do with either Wi-Fi or fixed networks in these kind of environments.
Yeah, interesting. 'Cause I know you've had some recent wins. I think Cleveland Clinic, I think NFL Coach to Coach communications-
Yeah
... interesting new use cases that, you know, at least were published that we saw. So do you think it's gonna take another couple years for private networks to really scale, or are you really starting to see some momentum?
I would say we're seeing momentum going into 2024.
Yeah.
You know, the scale of it, I would say we still have a lot to learn about how big it gets, but we are definitely seeing momentum builds going into 2024. The pipeline is very robust. And if you think about Coach to Coach as an example, you know, the NFL entrusted us with a very critical part of their game day experience, because, you know, they're you couldn't do it without a private network. And now they're coming to us, asking for other use cases. They're a classic example of saying, now that we have the private network in place and they see the power of it, they're talking about all sorts of other on-field and back-office applications that I think you'll see over the next few quarters.
If we talk about mobile edge compute or multi-access edge compute, however you want to define it.
Yeah
... you know, as you said, maybe that could be an interesting follow-on opportunity for private networks. You have partnerships with all the large hyperscale cloud companies. Maybe you could talk a little bit about, you know, that ecosystem. It's taken a little bit longer to develop, but, you know, what the opportunity set is specifically for Verizon, partnering with a lot of the cloud companies, and where you see the future of that business.
Yeah. I see it in two ways. One, we just talked about, which is, you know, where private networks are looking for more control, more security, more on-prem data processing, and we have a great lineup of capabilities with our partners to offer that kind of solution, and really industry-leading experience in doing that. The other one that's a little bit more kind of, you know, we haven't seen it materialize yet, is what I would call the low latency mobile use case, right?
Which is, you know, in an ultra-wideband environment, I now have the capability to deliver, high throughputs, low latency, and if you couple it with MEC, in the local SAP or TAP location, you know, close to the edge of the network, you know, I think there's a lot of B to B to C and other use cases that could leverage that technology. Again, we haven't seen the devices and the ecosystem emerge yet, but it is absolutely something we're preparing for because we think it, it'll be a, another way to leverage the capacity and low latency that we're able to put into the hands of customers.
Since we're at a tech conference, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask about, you know, the buzzword of 2023, which is generative AI. And clearly, you know, companies like NVIDIA and, you know, ChatGPT have been, you know, very disruptive in the market, have gotten a lot of headlines. So maybe, you know, how does a mobile 5G operator play into the evolution of some of the new generative AI use cases that are on the horizon? I realize that's a very big picture question, but-
Yeah
... you know, we get asked about that sometimes-
Yeah
and be curious to get your take.
I would say generally, what we're focused on right now is... And, you know, when we think of generative AI, it's at the end of this spectrum that we've been-- this journey we've been on around, you know, big data, machine learning, et cetera.... So we're more focused, I would say, at this point, internally, which is: how do we leverage these new capabilities to either run more, high-performing, more reliable networks, or we use them in customer experience, we use them in our digital experiences?
So there's been a lot of work we've done up till now, in our SON platform, our self-optimizing network platforms, to leverage these kind of new, capabilities, our predictive models, our capacity management models, all of these things we're leveraging the capabilities of the spectrum of, you know, big machine learning and big data. Yet to see how it evolves as far as use cases where, you know, generative AI is more of a real-time mobility use case. I could certainly see how it could evolve over time, where, you know, customers want on their devices generative AI that happens real time as they're walking around and experiencing things.
We'll see how that evolves, but, my job is to make sure I'm building the kind of capabilities in the network with Ultra Wideband and MEC, and low latency, to be able to serve those kind of use cases in the future. We'll see if they evolve. I certainly hope they do.
Sure. Sure. Yeah, it'll be interesting to watch. So I wanted to touch on your spectrum portfolio. Obviously, you're still building out C-band, so you have a lot of runway. But in the wireless business, you can never have too much spectrum, right? It's a critical resource. It's a finite resource. So maybe you could talk about, you know, opportunities beyond just deployment C-band, whether that's refarming spectrum from 4G to 5G, and then maybe longer term, you know, opportunities to get additional spectrum, whether that's mid or high band-
Mm-hmm.
you know, how you kinda look at the spectrum landscape today-
Yeah
... and what it might look like over the next 3-5 years.
Yeah. I would say the good news is, we've never been in a better spectrum position, but as you said, I, some of you may remember a guy named Lowell McAdam, who I used to work for, who used to joke that if he ever meets an engineer who doesn't want more spectrum, that engineer is probably well suited for a project management job. So, to your point, right? You know, so I love the spectrum holdings we have. I think we have a lot of runway to get them deployed in the hands of customers. But there's two things I would say that, you know, I just, all of us need to continue to work on, which is, I don't think as a country, we do a good job of efficiently utilizing our spectrum resources.
I think there's lots of examples of that that I have personal experience with. And then, we talk a lot about just spectrum pipeline. So I really applaud that the White House, the recent announcement they made to explore putting some spectrum up for auction, potentially, in the mid-band, et cetera. I think that acknowledges the importance of it, and I appreciate that they've done that, but I think there's a lot more work to do for the U.S. to build a really healthy and robust long-term pipeline of where this industry needs to go. Recognizing that, you know, we're...
You know, we believe that when you put licensed spectrum in the hands of operators like Verizon, you know, it grows our industry, it gives customers great connectivity, and allows for new use cases and new industries to emerge. So, we think there's a lot of work to do to kind of build that long-term pipeline, but, I'm very pleased with where we're at right now, and I got a lot of work to do to get it in the hands of our customers across the country.
The industry's obviously evolved as well, where you can input better technology into the networks to improve propagation, 'cause I remember when I first started in the industry, you know, low-band spectrum was the crown jewel of the 4G network.
Mm-hmm.
And now we're increasingly talking about higher and higher bands of spectrum that we never thought would be put on macro networks. And, you know, talk about what you're doing from a technology standpoint, whether it's, you know, Massive MIMO or beamforming, some of the ways that you can generate much better performance out of a mid-band network than you could have 5-10 years ago, to help expand the reach of 5G.
You know, I really appreciate the question because, you know, a lot of times we just talk about the number of sites or the amount of spectrum that you have, but to your point, there's a lot that goes into building the best network. It starts with building the best network with the best technology, and we partner with our manufacturers to make sure that we're getting the best technology out in the hands of customers. So to your point, you know, we have the latest and greatest technology around Massive MIMO, and we're doing a ton of work to make sure that we're on the leading edge of that, and we're utilizing the spectrum very efficiently, and effectively, and getting the most out of every hertz, you know?
And I think that's a key part. It also is a lot about optimizing as well, and I don't think we talk enough about that. It's why I invest in the 3,000 people that live, work, and play where our customers live, work, and play, who are testing the network each and every day and optimizing, you know, each sector, for where the usage has been and where it's going. And that's another key point in just making sure that you're efficiently and effectively delivering the kind of reliability and performance for customers. It's not just necessarily the spectrum you put on the radio or on the tower. So, there's a lot of work going on.
It's also and I'm not sure I want to bridge to this, but it's also why I get a lot of questions around O-RAN, and we're very supportive and we're doing a lot of work to develop that ecosystem. But if I look at the performance of the O-RAN at this point, it can't do the kind of things like Massive MIMO at 16T16R that 64T64R, you know, those kind of performance measures, we're just not there yet. And until we are, it doesn't have a place necessarily in the kind of performance that I want to deliver to my customers. So and that goes for lots of different things. We're always focused on: Can this deliver an incremental but performance lift for the customers?
Yeah. Yeah. Okay, that's a helpful, helpful overview. So I wanted to touch on a topic you mentioned earlier, which is, you know, BEAD and some of the rural broadband subsidy programs that are out there. And there's, there's obviously more than just BEAD. There's been the CARES Act, the American Rescue Plan Act. There have been a lot of state initiatives to deploy broadband in harder to reach areas. So, maybe you could talk about, you know, that opportunity set, how you, how you evaluate it. Obviously, you, you know, you have to make an appropriate return in some of these areas.
Yeah.
I know some of these more rural areas are much harder to build in, much lower population densities, maybe topography that's a little more challenging-
Yeah.
than dense metro areas. So how you evaluate the opportunity to build broadband into increasingly rural areas?
Yeah. So, first, I'll just frame it. Right now, we look at that from a fiber perspective, only in our ILEC footprint, because we think we have the infrastructure and the competitive advantage to make competitive bids, and to get that return that you talked about. So we're focused on the ILEC footprint, when it comes to fiber. We definitely think there's a space outside of the ILEC footprint for fixed wireless access, but there hasn't been such an appetite for that just yet. We'll see how that evolves with these funding rollouts, because I believe that, you know, there are places in this country that for no one fiber is gonna be the answer. It just won't make sense.
I think fixed wireless access is a great alternative for those customers to get broadband. So we'll see how that evolves. But if I think about inside the ILEC footprint, we largely look at each case individually, right? And it's a pretty complicated model that we have built to make sure that we're being aggressive on our bids, but we're also making a good return. You know, it's based on penetration, based on competitiveness in the area, based on, you know, how much work we think we have to do, how many homes will we pass beyond the ones that are, you know, underserved or unserved. All that goes into the model.
And then, if we feel like it's right for us, we'll bid on it, and we ask for a certain percent. We've been very aggressive in trying to make sure we balance what we're asking for versus what we're willing to put up ourselves, to make the whole case work for everybody.
I assume part of the equation as well is, you know, when you bundle, whether it's fixed wireless or fiber broadband with your, you know, your smartphone and mobile network, you know, that's a better outcome for you as well in terms of customer retention-
Absolutely
... able to sell additional services. So part of the equation in areas where maybe you might be able to improve your smartphone penetration-
Mm-hmm
does that kind of work its way into the calculus of, of how you-
It, it is part of the calculation. You know, do we think we can improve churn in the area on mobility, if we bring broadband in? It's, it's not a huge part of the equation, but it definitely is part of the factor we, we look at. Yeah.
I guess just right before we finish up, I mean, we spent a lot of time talking about 5G use cases for the enterprise. Are there any, you know, consumer applications or use cases you see on the horizon that could be a game changer for mobile 5G or anything you're excited about?
You know, the one thing that I'm seeing more and more development on, 'cause, you know, generally in the consumer space, the device, the devices haven't changed that much dramatically. There haven't been significant innovations in the device space. But I am definitely seeing more and more innovation in wearables, especially in, you know, glasses-type environments. And I, you know, whenever I look at or get invited to see some of these new technologies that people are coming up with, you know, they're struggling with this idea of where I think they're a little bit stuck in a 4G world, where they feel like they have to tether the device or, you know, they struggle with, you know, what can they do in a real mobile environment to create an AR experience with, with wearables?
and I do think with the ultra-wideband network Verizon is building, where we have high throughputs, low latency, you know, I think some advancements in RedCap, et cetera, that we'll see coming, hopefully change a little bit of the dynamics that allow for those kind of wearable devices to really take shape in the mobile environment.
Yeah.
I'm excited about that. We'll see how it evolves. I can't make a prediction on it, but, you know, I would like to see some more innovation in the device space that capitalizes on the ultra-wideband experience we're building.
I think that's a good place to leave it. So Joe, thank you. Thank you for joining us today.
Thank you. Appreciate it.