American wireless carrier Verizon Communications has invested a massive $12.6 billion during the first nine months of 2014.
For comparison, Idea Cellular, an Indian telecom operator will be investing INR 3500 crore in 12 months as capital expenditure. This does not include spectrum cost.
The Capex (capital spending) of Verizon Communications in the first three quarters rose 6.9 percent year over year.
One of the focus areas of Verizon was 4G LTE network coverage.
Verizon, announcing the financial results for Q3 2014, today said it projects Capex of around $17 billion in 2014. Verizon said its focus will be on investing in wireless infrastructure to stay ahead of customer demand by adding capacity to optimize the company’s 4G LTE network.
How Verizon is spending
Verizon Wireless enhanced 4G LTE network capacity, using AWS-1 spectrum and the bandwidth, called XLTE, is available in more than 400 markets.
China Mobile, the largest telecom operator in the world, did not even share Capex details when it announced its third quarter revenue details on Monday. China Mobile’s 4G user base reached 40 million in the third quarter. Verizon did not share 4G subscriber base.
In Q3 2014, Verizon Wireless migrated an additional 55,000 customers to fiber optics replacing high-maintenance portions of its residential copper network, bringing the year-to-date total to around 200,000.
This apart, Verizon Enterprise Solutions began deploying enterprise-grade network, cloud, security, mobility and other technology solutions.
Verizon Q3 revenue
Meanwhile, Verizon said its operating revenues rose 4.3 percent to $31.6 billion.
Verizon targets consolidated revenue growth of 4 percent in 2014.
New revenue streams from machine-to-machine and telematics totaled $150 million in third-quarter 2014 – or more than $400 million through the first nine months of 2014, an increase of more than 40 percent year to date.
Verizon Wireless
Verizon Wireless revenues increased 7.0 percent to $21.8 billion. Service revenues rose 4.8 percent to $18.4 billion. Retail service revenues grew 4.6 percent to $17.6 billion.
Baburajan K
editor@telecomlead.com
