Verizon's Seidenberg: Wireline growth driven by clouds, enterprise, fiber-based services

With its landline voice business continuing to decline at a regular clip, Verizon's CEO and Chairman Ivan Seidenberg has made it a goal in 2011 to drive growth in its wireline business.

Speaking at this week's 21st annual Citi 2011 Global Entertainment, Media and Telecommunications Conference in Phoenix, Seidenberg believes that the best way to achieve this goal is will be in advancing its presence in the cloud services segment, global network expansion to support multinational corporations and growing FiOS. When Verizon initially launched FTTP FiOS strategy, the ILEC thought it would get 25 percent penetration in the markets it launched the service. However, in the markets where it has FiOS penetration for 36 months it is seeing 40 percent penetration on video and data. Despite the growth it is seeing on its mobile networks, Verizon believes there will still be needed to have high bandwidth fiber-based facilities into homes.

Not surprisingly, the killer application driving the need for fiber is video. "If you get underneath what's driving the fiber in the metropolitan markets it has been the need for increased video, increased reliability and security for customers," Seidenberg said. "The way we think about it is even though we have this great 4G mobile network, you still need to have fiber to the premises because we think your home will utilize a Gigabit of bandwidth."