It's just another small data point, but Citizens Communications says it does detect a slowdown in sales it believes is related to economic sluggishness in areas serving about 12 percent of its customers.
"We do see a slowdown in the economy in our California and Arizona markets," says Maggie Wilderotter, Citizens Communications CEO. And it seems to be housing related.
California and Arizona are "the only two markets that we have that have definitely had the housing issues," Wilderotter says.
"So, from the gross add perspective, what we have seen is a slowdown in gross adds out there, but it is not about the competition necessarily getting them," she notes.
"It is also about housing remaining vacant at the moment until inventory starts to get absorbed," Wilderotter says.
So what might be notably different about this particular dip in economic growth, compared to earlier slowdowns the telecom and cable industries have weathered, is the overhang of unsold homes whose owners might be disconnecting services.
That doesn't mean disconnection or downgrades at the primary residence, but at the second or investment homes.
So far, though, Citizens hasn't seen anything material in terms of bad debt on the small business side of its business. That's important, as small businesses represent roughly 50 percent of company revenues, and about 92 percent of our business customers.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Citizens Sees Slowdown in California and Arizona
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
What Declining Industry Can Afford to Alienate Half its Customers?
Some people believe the new trend of major U.S. newspapers declining to make endorsements in presidential races is an abdication of their “p...
-
We have all repeatedly seen comparisons of equity value of hyperscale app providers compared to the value of connectivity providers, which s...
-
It really is surprising how often a Pareto distribution--the “80/20 rule--appears in business life, or in life, generally. Basically, the...
-
Is there a relationship between screen size and data consumption? One might think the answer clearly is “yes,” based on the difference bet...
No comments:
Post a Comment