Strong Equipment Sales Shore up Verizon

Verizon reported a 4% year-on-year rise in revenue to 32 billion US dollars in the first quarter of 2015. However, wireless service revenues fell 0.4% to 17.9 billion dollars despite a 25% increase in M2M revenues to 150 million dollars. Verizon said: "Equipment revenues increased 1.5 billion dollars, compared with first-quarter 2014, as more customers chose Verizon Edge pricing. This pricing makes it easy to buy a new device with a low upfront cost and simple monthly instalments."

Verizon also reported that 4G devices now constitute approximately 70% of its retail postpaid connections base, up from 49% a year ago – with the 4G LTE network handling about 86% of total wireless data traffic in first-quarter 2015. source: Verizon statement