Verizon CEO Says They Are Ready For Merger With Anyone

Lowell McAdam, who is the CEO of Verizon, said that he would be willing to discuss merger with almost any company, including Comcast. “If [Comcast CEO] Brian [Roberts] came knocking on the door, I’d have a discussion with him about it,” McAdam said in an interview. “But I’d also tell you there isn’t much that I wouldn’t have a discussion around if somebody came and said, ‘here’s a compelling reason why we ought to put the businesses together’”

McAdam also added that he is open to have merger talks with the players like CBS or Walt Disney. However, this does not mean that Comcast is planning to announce a merger soon. McAdam said that Verizon has not yet found the right partner for merger from the point of view of network architecture. He added that Verizon is installing much fiber to support their wireless network and that none of the best internet service providers is matching their network infrastructure.

In December, McAdam said that a merger with Charter Communications would make “industrial sense.” When asked about this comment, he said, “As we’ve looked at companies around the US, there is nobody building to the architecture that we’re talking about.” He then explained the plans of Verizon to boost up the density of fiber in cities like Boston, saying, “A cable company would have customers, obviously, would have infrastructure, conduits, pole attachments. But it doesn’t have that kind of fiber.”

The different comments of the Verizon CEO about merger are not contradictory. He is just open to mergers with any company that can make a sensible deal, whether it is another cheap internet provider or a programmer. Yet until now, McAdam is not convinced that the other operators have the necessary architecture to support the fiber rollout of Verizon.

“I think our shareholders expect us to look at every option, but I would tell you right now we haven’t seen the architectural fit, and we haven’t seen a willing seller and a willing buyer to have a meeting of the minds,” he said. “From a fiber perspective, nobody, whether you’re a fiber company or you’re a cable company, you don’t have the architecture that we’re talking about today.”

“For now, Verizon is building that architecture itself,” McAdam said. As for Comcast, officials claim that they have 145,000 miles of fiber laid across their thirty-nine state territory. This is in addition to their coaxial cable deployments.