Although Verizon remains the leader in the U.S. wireless market, T-Mobile and Sprint are undermining its duopoly with AT&T at the margin. Disruptive actions by these two smaller rivals--such as offering unlimited data plans--threaten to make overall industry economics less attractive and conflict with Verizon's core strategy of leading with network quality and monetizing increasing amounts of data traffic.
Although Verizon still benefits from a cost advantage over the smaller rivals and will still earn returns above its cost of capital, its ability to command premium pricing will decrease over time.