Troubles With Verizon's 4G Network, Again (VZ, T, S)

Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) had already suffered one outage of its new heavily marketed 4G network.  It appears that the data portion of that 4G network is suffering yet another outage today, although today’s outage is more intermittent rather than being a nationwide outage.  At some point, it is easy to question the company about how this challenges the company’s marketing efforts against rival AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) and others.  If unchecked and unresolved for long, ‘outage’ will become outrage.  So much for what is being marketed as “The Fastest, Most Advanced 4G Network in America.”

Our own Douglas McIntyre put in a call to customer service, due to the 4G data package not working in New York City.  He was told that the voice and text services are working normally, but the 4G data network (i.e. data transfer and proper internet usage) is experiencing intermittent outages at the moment.  My own iPhone is on the 3G network, and it did work fine.  A call into the local store here in Houston confirmed that the iPhone is on the 3G network. 

Marketing heavily for the 4G network is something that you have expected considering all of the challenges that Verizon has made for AT&T (and that AT&T has made against Verizon).  What this does to Verizon’s marketing efforts is questionable at best.  It has to be a win for AT&T.  If the problems persist and if it turns out that Verizon was not really much better than AT&T, one might even be able to argue that it could be a win for Sprint Nextel Corporation (NYSE: S).

Sprint shares are up almost 1% at $5.24, AT&T is up 0.35% at $31.24 and Verizon shares are up only $0.02 at $37.80.

JON C. OGG