Competition doesn’t scare Verizon Wireless CEO

Verizon Wireless chief executive Dennis Strigl said Wednesday he doesn’t foresee growth slowing in the increasingly competitive wireless market and expects to beat Wall Street’s estimates for this fiscal year.

“We beat ’05 estimates and it looks like we’ll quite easily beat ’06 estimates,” he said. He made the remarks at a Goldman Sachs conference.

Verizon Wireless is a joint venture between Verizon Communications (up $0.16 to $36.16, Charts) and Vodafone (up $0.06 to $21.61, Charts).

Strigl said he expects the data side of Verizon’s business to be a strong driver of growth in the future. He also said the company will mine its existing customer base for growth and emphasize ways to get its customers to spend more.

The difference for carriers in the future will not only be the network but the overall quality of user experience, and Verizon is focusing on improving overall service – from how the customer is handled in retail stores to the rendering of their bills – he said.

Strigl also said the company is weighing the options for upgrading its broadband network but that its hasn’t made any decision on fourth-generation networks yet. “4G has yet to be defined,” he said, adding that Verizon will make a decision on that technology at an appropriate time, but not now.

Earlier in the day, Sprint Nextel (up $0.17 to $17.51, Charts) chief executive Gary Forsee said he was confident demand for 4G networks is developing, especially for broadband-on-the-go services.

Sprint, the No. 3 cellphone carrier behind Cingular and Verizon Wireless, endorsed Wi-Max last month, saying it would invest more than $3 billion to build a new fourth-generation wireless network around the technology.

Shares of Verizon have climbed about 14 percent in the last year while Sprint shares have tumbled about 24 percent.

Source- http://money.cnn.com

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