I've been long VZ for a while too and so no reason to change, though I may work the edges as I try to raise more cash in the next month or two.

 

I don't think either Verizon or AT&T are going to be severely impacted by Apple... basically Apple can no longer play both phone companies off of each other.  Sprint can't offer Apple a foil for that.  This means that Apple now has to decide whether to reduce the phone company's costs in order to improve upgrade volumes, or to leave costs as they are and accept the lower upgrade volumes as the phone companies start charging users for upgrades to defray their own costs.  Either way the phone companies are going to be getting a chunk of cash back relative to the earlier deal.  Apple doesn't have the leverage any more.

 

Also, Verizon doesn't have a labor/retirement issue (I don't think).  They offloaded most of those issues onto FTR when they IPO'd FTR (that's why I've never been even remotely interested in investing in FTR).  If I recall I posted about that a long time ago, too.  It just seemed obvious to me.

 

-Matt