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Verizon CEO Calls Municipal Wi-Fi 'a Dumb Idea'
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?"
"The customer has come to expect so much."
That is unbelievable. Customer expectations are profit opportunities -- and if he's not willing to satisfy them, someone else will. He's actually angry that customers want service to keep improving!
"They want it to work in the elevator; they want it to work in the basement."
If Verizon won't provide the technology to make that happen, someone will.
How did he get so far? He reminds me of someone who'd say "I wish those customers would stop calling!"
Then again, when you're the CEO of a company that has a monopoly in most of its markets, I guess you can tell customers to f--- off with impunity.
San Francisco isn't big. Did you even bother to check the square miles covered by the city/county proper? Do you even know what SF's plan is when related to coverage areas?
Oh, that would be no to both.
For those who aren't familiar unlike many cities in the USA, SF is a very compact, small place because there simply is no way for it to sprawl as it is surrounded by water on three sides.
--- I do not moderate.
Actually, San Francisco is a perfect place for city-wide WiFi. SF is a rather small (physically) city compared to the population. Such a dense city is a perfect spot to give full-coverage cheap WiFi internet access, because you get so many people covered per square mile. Plus, him saying that it's a bad idea, simply because it takes work to make it happen is kind of ridiculous. "Slashdot is a bad idea, because someone has to design it, someone has to upgrade it, someone has to maintain, and someone has to run it." "A city-wide fire department coverage is a bad idea, because someone has to design it, someone has to upgrade it, someone has to maintain it, and someone has to run it." We're moving into an age where the internet is increasingly important, and access to it for everyone is going to end up needing to be present. One more thing. If he says that companies like Verizon are better suited to it, then why don't they start doing it? That's the whole problem is that they haven't. "Don't bother offering low-income children free public education, private companies like ours would be better at it."
He say 1 and 1 and 1 is 3, got to be good lookin' cause hes so hard to see...
The word the parent is looking for is, I believe, oligopoly, defined by dictionary.com as "A market condition in which sellers are so few that the actions of any one of them will materially affect price and have a measurable impact on competitors." You can also look it up on Wikipedia if you care to.
While not as bad as monopoly, it's still a problem, at least if you are a consumer. Voting with your wallet in an oligopoly is not very effective, as the choices are all practically the same.
Monopolies and oligopolies are really capitalism gone wrong. While capitalism is the best system, it needs a firm framework, otherwise you end up with a handful of companies running the show. In that situation they care little about the customers, but focus instead on the CEO's compensation. At the same time they are entrenched, rich and powerful enough to keep out any newcomers, thus maintaining the status quo. This is especially true where the threshold to play is very high, such as in the phone business, excluding voip.
<sarcasm>Finally, I knew there was a reason that annoying Verizon guy in the ads is never shown inside people's houses, of course you shouldn't imagine you could cancel your landline and simply use a cell. Everyone knows cell phones don't work inside private residences.</sarcasm>
A furore Normanorum libera nos, O Domine! [From the fury of the norsemen deliver us, O Lord!] -- Medieval prayer