Verizon CFO Fran Shammo said at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch conference this week that the recent strike of nearly 40,000 wireline and wireless workers will impact the company’s second quarter earnings by between 5 cents and 7 cents. The company is expected to report earnings per share of around $1 for the second quarter, down from $1.06 in the first quarter 2016.
At the conference, Shammo also said Verizon does not feel threatened by cable provider moves into the MVNO space and would consider additional deals with other cable operators. Shammo said the company, which last year signed an MVNO agreement with Comcast, went into the deal with “open eyes” and would “certainly do that again today.”
Four executives from Cisco’s prominent development team are leaving the company in the wake of an “apparent disagreement” over their new roles following a recent company reorganization, the Wall Street Journal reported. Mario Mazzola, Prem Jain, Luca Cafiero and Soni Jiandani will leave the company on June 17.
Cisco on Tuesday also released a report projecting the number of public Wi-Fi hotspots will grow seven fold over the next several years to a total of 432 million by 2020. According to the report, smartphones will generate 30 percent of total IP traffic by 2020. Video traffic will account for 82 percent of consumer Internet traffic by 2020, up from 68 percent in 2015, the report said.
AT&T on Tuesday announced it has opened an AT&T Foundry to focus on Internet of Things (IoT) solutions for connected healthcare. The facility is located in Houston at Texas Medical Center’s Innovation Institute.
A new report from Ericsson indicates the next big thing in wearables may not be a watch or a fitness tracker, but rather a personal safety device. According to the report, safety- and security-related devices topped consumers’ wish list, with 32 percent of consumers saying they’re interested in a panic or SOS button wearable. Also on the wish list? Smartwatches (28 percent interested), a wearable location tracker (27 percent), identity authenticator (25 percent) and a wearable water purifier (24 percent).
The report was based on responses from 5,000 smartphone users (of which 2,500 are wearable users) in Brazil, China, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States.
