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It's a daily challenge. It's reviewing reams of facts and figures on the numbers of subscribers signing up for telephone or Internet or television services — and analyzing the reasons why other subscribers are canceling. It's juggling public appearances and marketing promotions along with strategy meetings on the best way to fend off competitors such as Comcast, AT&T, Sprint Nextel and others.

To stay on course, says William R. Roberts, Verizon's regional president for Maryland and Washington, D.C., it helps to look back. Often he remembers the lessons of those who helped him move on from his early days as poor boy in Unionville on the Eastern Shore to the marble hallways of Capitol Hill and now the executive offices of a global telecom giant.

"The most impactful person on me was a village blacksmith," said Roberts, whose father died when he was very young. "I was his helper. I cleaned stalls, walked horses, anything. This man … he was a self-employed businessman, he shoed horses, made his own horseshoes … probably had as little as an eighth-grade education, but he was the smartest man I ever met.

"Because while he may not have had book smarts, what he taught me as a young boy was life smarts, common sense, relationships, how to conduct yourself, how to talk to people, how to do business … Those are the kinds of things I still think about today, those lessons that I learned from him."

A Chevy Chase resident today, with offices in Baltimore and Washington, Roberts helps Verizon, which had more than $93 billion in revenues last year, try to stay ahead of the pack in the competition for business and residential customers.

Just this week Verizon made an agreement, subject to mayoral and City Council approval, to provide Verizon FiOS television in the District. Roberts said in a statement, "We're eager to roll up our sleeves and get to work, and we urge the mayor and council to act for more choice and competition by approving this agreement expeditiously."

As president since 2000 of Verizon Maryland, which had total operating revenues of $2.27 billion in 2007, he's overseen the mushrooming of Verizon's statewide workforce from a few thousand to more than 12,000, as the company's services have expanded into more wireless communications, high-speed Internet, television and other broadband and Internet services and products.

The Business Gazette recently talked to Roberts about Verizon and how he got started in his career.

Do you have FiOS [Verizon's fiber-optic product] television in all areas of Maryland now?

No, and I can't tell you when it would be, because it has to be a market for it, to make the business case. We're still working on FiOS in Maryland … a large portion of the market is covered. We're in Howard, Anne Arundel, Baltimore County, Prince George's, parts of Montgomery …

However, I can say that 100 percent of the Verizon central offices are broadband equipped [for Internet services], at least for DSL … that includes small places like Somerset, Mount Airy, all over the entire state.

Has the economic slowdown affected Verizon's business?

I don't know that that's the case so much. Granted, I'm more concerned with the competition [how rivals affect Verizon sales] … but we have experienced some line loss [customers for wire-line services such as conventional telephone] and a lot of that is due to the competition.

But I think it's still early to tell because the services for us that can be termed discretionary [such as digital recording capabilities, streaming or gaming services], people may tighten their belt a little bit. But I still think the companies that are well-run, very well managed, fiscally conservative, will come out of this with a lot of opportunity.

You've lost landline business due to competition in Maryland. Could you elaborate on that?

For competitive reasons, I cannot share state-specific data. But, I can tell you that Verizon has experienced an 8- to 9-percent decrease per year in the number of landline phones we operate nationally — mainly due to competition. As you know, people communicate in a variety of ways these days — cell phones, text messaging, instant messaging, VoIP … just to name a few. We've offset that decrease with a significant increase in our number of broadband, video and wireless customers.

While wireless and VoIP services are options that a growing number of consumers have adopted over the past few years, the wired telephone is not going away with the dinosaur. Many people still rely on their landline phones for reliability and safety reasons — like during times of power outages.

What have been biggest challenges running Verizon Maryland? Labor relations? Handling, delivering the new technologies?

No. Regulation. That's the biggest challenge because the business has changed. We're not [just] the telephone company anymore. We're an information and entertainment company. It's more information … more information data carried now as opposed to voice. It's a different business. We're not the telephone company. It's a networking company, it's about the network you have.

So here's the issue. It's more competitive now. You can get voice, data, video, communications information services from a myriad of places, of companies, but there are still certain regulations that I am still regulated by, with government agencies [the Public Service Commission in Maryland] saying I'm a public service company, whereas a competitor, you or anyone else can come in, and siphon off my business, and you don't have the same regulations. So when you think about cable companies — who would have thought you could go to a cable company for phone service? Who would have thought you could come to us for television? But the difference is, the cable company is not regulated.

Because you're still considered a public utility?

Yes, according to the state, the regulatory structure of the state. So the field is not level. Now the way to go after [the competition] is not to go after them and try to regulate them; it's to give you, the consumer, the choice to let the market dictate.

You should be able to choose who you want based on the market, not on some artificially set price. If there's competition in the marketplace, who wins? The consumer, because if you don't like what's going on over here, don't like the price, or the service, what are you going to do? You're going to go somewhere else.

When the market [in the telecommunications industry] dictates, the consumer wins. But when the government dictates, nobody wins. So we're transforming the business from being a telephone company to an information and entertainment company. We're doing FiOS. And the Maryland- D.C. region is a very good climate.

What did you do before this job?

I was doing government relations work for Bell Atlantic [a predecessor company to Verizon]. I was lobbying Congress, dealing with public policy issues, on behalf of the company. My boss came to me and said, "I want you to go and interview for this job, that the Maryland job for president is available."

I thought why? — to myself, I didn't say this to him — I like this job, I liked interacting with Congress, I enjoyed that what I was doing was actually affecting laws that were going to affect the company. I was always thinking if my mother could see me now, walking down these marble halls, the flags outside the congressmen's offices. And once a law was passed and knowing that I had some input on it, made me feel sort of special. But then, I said, what have I got to lose.

What did your mom do when you were growing up?

She was a caregiver, she took care of kids, but also sick elderly people, and there were eight of us kids. My dad died when I was just a little boy.

You said you grew up poor?

Yes, but what black person wasn't poor, on the Eastern Shore then? But it was relative, because everybody was in the same boat. When you think about it, on the Eastern Shore, there's no industry — it's either farming, or you worked on the water, and a lot of people worked on the water, because a lot of people made a living on the water. But it was cyclical, seasonal work. But there was always plenty [of food to eat] though, because with the farming, you grew gardens, food, and with the water there you always had crabs, oysters and fish. So we were poor, but I guess we didn't know it until we got out of that environment.

After you graduated from Morgan State, what was your first job?

I got the highest-paying offer in my class, to go Detroit to work for Ford in their management program. They bring you in as a new management hire and they rotate you every six months in different facets of the business. So they brought me in and my first assignment was in human resources, labor relations. Then I went to industrial engineering, doing time and motion studies.

Then I went to an assembly line, where they told me I was going to supervise people who are actually making parts. This was an assembly line that never stops, goes 24/7, and my responsibility was to put out 1,600 quality automatic transmissions a day.

How did these people take to you, a college kid, fresh out of school?

Yes, there was some resistance because, no, I was not one of them, I hadn't worked on an assembly line. Most of the guys were quick to tell me they had more time on that machine than I had on this planet. And they were right. Most of them had been there 25 or 30 years and here I was 21 years old telling them this is the way it goes.

But again, drawing from all of those things growing up of dealing with people, spending time with senior citizens, folks my mother worked with, people in the community, the blacksmith — I understood there was a lot of psychology you had to use. And I had to figure out what made these people tick and what ticked them off, if I was going to get my production. Well, it was usually each individual person was different. They may have had whatever socialization process [regarding racial differences] they came with or whatever biases, but I was there like them for the same reason: to do a job to get paid to make money.

Just because I happened to be in a position to be the leader, I didn't walk around like that. I was like, "We're here and we're a team." And usually [when there was a problem] it was usually a thing like, "Well, you come in every day, I saw you spend time over there, you drank coffee with her, you drank coffee with him. You didn't come over to see me." They're like kids. They wanted attention, so I would do that, just go say something, say a silly joke, even just yell at them, that's all they wanted, for you to notice them. You think about it, you spend 25 years of your life on a machine, there's a pride there. Once I understood the whole psychology, that was that, there were no problems. I could have been green, they didn't care … because I was one of them.

How did you get back here, and work for the telephone company?

Because I started watching the trends. When I started, we worked six days, then it went to five days. I could see trends were changing. I figured I better start looking. I came home to visit my mother and my grandmother was working at Western Electric, making those old black dial phones. She said, "Baby, you need to go down to the telephone company." I did … and after I took a test, and I qualified, they flew me out for an interview. And I got a job [in Washington, with the then-C&P Telephone Co., which became Bell Atlantic and then Verizon] in the business office, supervising customer service, billing, collections.

Did you ever have a particular mentor during your career?

No … just sort of like growing up, I had many. I talked to leaders, talked to everybody about what they were doing. The things l gleaned from all of those many mentors that I thought were good, these were the things I kept; what I thought I couldn't use, I discarded.

William R. Roberts

-Age: 52.

-Position: President, Verizon Maryland and Washington, D.C., for Verizon Communications of New York. Oversees operations and finances, along with public policy, external affairs and regulatory matters.

-Education: Bachelor's in business, Morgan State University; attended graduate school, Howard University, Eastern Michigan University.

-Honorary degrees: Doctorate of humane letters, University of Maryland, Eastern Shore; doctorate of public service, University of Maryland University College.

-Awards: Business Philanthropy Award, Maryland Chamber of Commerce, 2007; Salvation Army Compassion in Action Award, 2006; Business Leader of the Year Award, Loyola College, 2004.

-Organizations: Board member of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Greater Baltimore Committee, Greater Washington Board of Trade, Maryland Chamber of Commerce, MedStar Health and National Aquarium in Baltimore; Morgan State University Board of Regents.

-Residence: Chevy Chase.

-Family: Wife, daughter — and two dogs.

-Hobbies: Reading, playing golf and participating in outdoor exercises, such as running, walking and bike riding.