People seem to like Verizon’s new Simplicity plan, at least according to their Q3 earnings report. Verizon had “another record-breaking” quarter, thanks to hundreds of thousands of postpaid phone additions.
Specifically, Verizon reported 406,000 postpaid phone net additions, which amounts to an 820% increase year-over-year. It’s not much of an increase over Q1 and Q2 of this year, but the company is in the midst of a turnaround following several horrible years with customer losses.
Verizon’s new CEO is certainly seeing numbers he should be pleased with since taking over a year ago. Dan Schulman has brought about a number of changes in a relatively short amount of time, including the introduction of Simplicity, an unlimited plan without heavy subsidies or any free perks. He’s also introduced a new loyalty program that may be helping to keep customers around.
But as Verizon is seeing Q3 success, let’s not forget that Schulman laid off thousands upon thousands of Verizon employees and sold stores to 3rd party dealers, which also impacted their own employees.
Many of those cuts have come because Schulman has one of the weirdest AI obsessions we’ve seen. He believes that up to 30% of us won’t have jobs soon because of AI, has admitted to having AI write poetry for his wife, thinks people should encourage their children to realize the importance of AI, and suggested to his employees that they have AI write their own obituaries.
We called him “lost in the AI sauce,” but each time I re-read the story of his infatuation with AI, the more disturbed I get by it. Our future is controlled by guys like Schulman, who have so deeply bought into an AI-first world that the destruction it creates along the way doesn’t seem to resonate, thanks to the one-off AI slop it can generate for personal use.
Anyways, Verizon had a decent quarter, at least compared to their previous quarters. People must be signing up for Simplicity, and I’d imagine that’s because they can get into it for $30 per month.
// Verizon
