Verizon Turns to Inside Fixer to Pull Mobile Giant Out of Downward Spiral

For more than a decade, Verizon Communications Inc. was the No. 1 US wireless provider by almost every metric that mattered. As recently as 2021 it commanded 40% of the mobile phone subscriber market and had a reputation for the best, most reliable network.

Today, a series of strategic errors have left Verizon in a precarious position. The costly purchases of AOL and Yahoo!, which were an attempt to grow in digital media, didn’t pan out. And a turn toward an alternative radio wave technology proved to be an unnecessary detour in the race to 5G, allowing T-Mobile USA Inc. to amass a two-year advantage. Verizon is now shedding more subscribers than it’s adding and has seen its market share shrink about 1.6% while T-Mobile has increased its share by about the same amount. Wall Street has made its disappointment known, sending the stock down 46% since the end of 2020.

Two executives in as many years have tried and failed to pull Verizon out of this spiral. The third — the one widely seen as Verizon’s last chance to turn things around — is Sowmyanarayan Sampath. The nine-year company veteran was tapped earlier this year as the chief executive officer of Verizon’s consumer business, the unit that accounts for the vast majority of the company’s revenue. In May, he met with 400 managers and acknowledged the difficult path ahead.