How Much Market Share Will AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless Lose?

It isn’t yet clear how much market share Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility are willing to lose to Sprint, T-Mobile US and other contestants, undoubtedly including Google, in the near future.

Verizon and AT&T already say the customers they are losing to Sprint and T-Mobile US are the “least attractive,” financially, and there likely is much truth in such statements.

Offers based on price--which is how T-Mobile US and Sprint are attacking the market, are likely to be most attractive to price-conscious customers.

Verizon historically positions at the “premium” end of the market, and often is willing to lose customers rather than compete vigorously on price.

For that reason, some believe Verizon could lose 10 percent market share to other fixed network providers of gigabit Internet access services, unless Verizon decides to compete at the “gigabit for $70 to $100” price-value point. Some think Verizon will not do so.

But some also believe Google Fiber will keep the pressure on the other major ISPs with less investment than some might have predicted.

Instead, some think mobile and wireless now is the new focus. By some estimates, about 10 percent of U.S. consumers buy service from a mobile virtual network operator, as Google will be.

So is it reasonable to think Google, all the rest of the MVNOs, Sprint and T-Mobile US might be able to take up to 10 percent additional share from AT&T and Verizon?

It’s hard to say, as it also is possible Sprint, T-Mobile US and Google might take share from the other MVNOs as much as from AT&T and Verizon.

Maybe five percent from each service provider is a more reasonable expectation of potential AT&T or Verizon share loss.

The point is that AT&T and Verizon, while moving to protect the core of their customer bases, are not going to try and protect 100 percent. Some attrition at Verizon and AT&T therefore is going to happen.