Verizon CEO Calls Municipal Wi-Fi 'a Dumb Idea' 434
ozone writes "
An interview with Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg quotes him as saying that 'Municipal Wi-Fi is one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard' and 'Why in the world would you think your (cell) phone would work in your house?' -- apparently Verizon's own 'Can You Hear Me Now' ad campaign has given customers 'unrealistic expectations' that their phone service will work everywhere. What?"
Re:This CEO just made me promise never to buy Veri (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, I think the article is a joke. It seems a little slanted, but I'm sure the reporter doesn't have any hiden agenda. I'm not one to defend phone companies, but where's the rest of the comments? I really don't think the CEO of a major telecom would come off that bad, unless the interview was held in a bar with strippers pouring free drinks!
Re:This CEO just made me promise never to buy Veri (Score:2, Informative)
BTW, Verizon is not a monopoly. They aren't the largest cell phone provider in the US anymore.
thank goodness for archive.org ;) (Score:1, Informative)
(you'll have to remove the space to enter the url)
the main page has an error in the middle but the rest of the site seems visible (navigation is in seperate frames)
Re:Reaction (Score:3, Informative)
V: Leia
VI: Han, 3PO, Leia
So, yeah, take your pick. But IIRC, Han says it in the first when they're being tractored into the deathstar.
verizon fighting city wireless in philly too (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/11410060.htm [philly.com]
Point - counterpoint... (Score:5, Informative)
But private telephone companies aren't doing it. Governments and enthusiastic hoppyists are. Private restaurants and bookstores are. Private phone companies are trying to get individuals to pay through the nose by the megabyte for 4G services and selling them data-enabled phones that they can't access their preferred data services from.
I have a Verizon phone. It's more powerful than my PDA, but I can't run any of my own software on it... in fact I can't run ANY software on it, except by paying exorbitant rates to Verizon for "Buy It Now". Verizon has a cash cow in their captive customer base, and they don't just milk it... they bleed it. Is it any wonder people don't see them as the natural providers of high speed data services, services... I note again... they they're not even providing.
"Why in the world would you think your (cell) phone would work in your house?" he said. "The customer has come to expect so much. They want it to work in the elevator; they want it to work in the basement."
You're selling me a telephone, and you tell me it's good enough to replace my landline. Why shouldn't I take you at your word?
AT least your coverage is better than T-Mobile. T-Mobile I had to walk to the other side of my street to get a signal. Hell with "in my house" how about "in my back yard"?
Last year, the California Public Utilities Commission ordered all phone companies to give customers 30 days to test a service without slapping them with hundreds of dollars in early cancellation fees.
A few years ago I had a nice PDA-phone combo. I went to the phone companies that were compatible with it, and tried to get it activated with the pre-paid card they were selling.I didn't get far enough to find out about "early cancellation fees".
Open your books, mister Seidenberg, quit treating your customers as criminals and fools, and then maybe people will quit turning to government because the free enterprise system has failed them... because the cellphone market doesn't resemble anything so much as a parody of a soviet health-care program. Homeopathic levels of service and no accountability...
Re:Mobiles in the UK (Score:2, Informative)
I think that's the issue. Cell phones are a convienence to many people in the US, not necessarily an essential. While millions of people have cell phones, to most people (YMMV), land lines at home are still the primary mode of communication. We have learned to accept problems with the wireless network; when our land lines become unreliable, that's when we break out with the pitchforks and the fire.
Coming Soon: Wireless Sea of Data Transmission (Score:5, Informative)
As for indoor reliability of cell phones, my Sprint works quite well at home, but only after they built a new cell-phone tower quite close to where I live. I probably have the Chicago Bears to thank for that, as they played their home games here in Champaign a year or two ago while their stadium was modernized, and the cell phone capacity probably had to be upgraded for the temporary flood of Chicagoans.
Cell phones could easily be upgrade to work indoors by either of two ways. A repeater station with a larger antenna, possibly pointed in some general direction of the nearest cell if the signal is really week. Secondly, smart or dynamic bandwidth use. The electronics probably aren't cheap enough yet, but no doubt soon will be to dynamically use only as much bandwidth as is needed for reliable data transmission. A benefit of this would be the ability to pay a little more for a higher quality voice signal, say using a full 32K or 64K of bandwidth instead of the over-compressed 16k one-size-fits-all chunk used today. In the digital realm a weak signal can be compensated for by using more bandwidth. You can also go the other direction, more reliability by keeping the bandwidth constant but slowing the data rate.
In any event the cell phone is a specialized device, the early ones where analog, the latter ones hard wired to handle a very specific chunk of 16K voice data. Adding on cameras and the like are really just kludges and I suspect true 3G services will never truly arrive being side stepped by the advent of an internet everywhere sea of data always flowing, flowing, flowing. When out of range to reach the internet backbone some devices will probably be courteous enough to hand data along in bucket brigade fashion until it gets to where it needs to go.
Shouldn't pay service on free bands be illegal? (Score:4, Informative)
It just seems like a rip off for consumers to get a useful radio technology and then get it essentially taken away by someone making a buck off it.
Re:Bad service (Score:1, Informative)
(By the way, my Verizon cell phone actually did not work for long stretches across that state on I-70.)
Re:Slashdot: Meet The Shark (Score:4, Informative)
FYI: Verizon != Verizon Wireless (Score:1, Informative)
the company Verizon Wireless.
Isn't it Verizon Wireless who has the "can you hear me now" catch phrase? If so , you are
comparing oranges to tangelos with all your dumb "can you hear me now" jokes.
Re:Point - counterpoint... (Score:2, Informative)
If you want to know why these assholes insist on long term contracts and deposits, I have two words for you: Quarters and Securitization.
Quarters:
Every public company is so crazy about getting their quarterly numbers in consistently for Wall Street, many of them (esp. utitilities) would rather lose revenue by having you walk away without buying anything, than having you buy a service for a month and then stop using it. (Nothing worse for their stock price than a "reduction" in revenues.) If they lock you into a long contract, they've got you. A few of you will cancel, but the deposit/cancellation penalty mitigates the hit on their numbers.
Securitization:
A lot of these businesses take your contracts and "securitize" them, which means they sell the revenue from your contracts into structured finance vehicles (ie, companies with no other business) that then issue bonds that get paid out using your expected revenues. If you stop paying them by canceling your service, the bonds' interest won't get paid (or it will be lower than the target rate). The more ways they can lock you in -- I'm always amazed how many people won't cancel a $100 a month 2-year service because they don't want to pay a $200 penalty -- the more likely they can keep the "asset pool" (ie, your contract) in good shape.
It sucks, but those are the realities. Try getting a health club, auto club, phone company, etc., to sell you something a la carte. They look at you like you have come in to kill them... because non-recurring revenue just doesn't make sense in their financial world.
Re:FYI: Verizon != Verizon Wireless (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This CEO just made me promise never to buy Veri (Score:2, Informative)
Look, I hate to burst your bubble, but what you're describing is the natural conclusion of capitalism. You can't say "capitalism is the best system" on one hand while describing in detail its very obvious and very current deleterious effects.
Capitalism is not a synonym for "well-oiled economny." Nor is it a synonym for "freedom" or "opportunity." Capitalism is a set of power relations, and nothing more. The conclusion of those power relations is the present day world.
You can't get around it, like most traditional economists do, by saying: well, that's not how it's supposed to work, so what we see here are aberrations. Just like you can't look at communist command economies and say, "Well, that's not how it's supposed to work." Tell it to the Polish.
We need a new alternative. People are brewing one [parecon.org] as we speak.
Re:"Someone will have to..." (Score:3, Informative)
Thank you, thank you for not including the "640k should be enough for anyone" line fancifully attributed to William Gates III.
Back in the 80s when it started making the rounds, everyone could tell it was only a joke, but apparently youngsters heard it and took it seriously...
Re:How could this happen? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Please, stop the extremism (Score:5, Informative)
Now it is the case that government run programs can involve lack of choice. But in general you are sacrificing utility and low cost to get increased choice by going private.