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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?"
"Can you ping me now? No? Good!"
And, in true slashfashion, they eliminated all context in order to get us stupid plebes to post angrily and jerk off the adserver for them. Here's what he actually said:
That could be one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard. It sounds like a good thing, but the trouble is someone will have to design it, someone will have to upgrade it, someone will have to maintain it and someone will have to run it.
Which is a valid point. Even if it turns out that people are willing to pay for all the work that has to go into it and the system works, it's a perfectly valid logistics concern. It just so happens he doesn't have faith that it will work.
Furthermore, there's little context in the article about the comments on cell coverage. I get the impression he's complaining about people who call to whine that the phone doesn't work in certain, limited patches even though it works fine everywhere else. I'd wager that would be a small number of people complaining about lack of service in very limited areas, not a significant problem that he's writing off as being unimportant or below his company to fix.
And I'm posting this as a guy who hates Verizon so much that I go out of my way to avoid using them....
IHBT into giving slashdot revenue.
Oh, wait... no I haven't. Because ads.osdn.com is in my hosts file pointing to 127.0.0.1 until the day they stop scatterbanning me on networks I haven't done anything on, and start posting worthwhile, intelligent content to the site rather than this half-assed drivel full of half-truths and misinformation just to get people up in arms.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
I knew I was expecting too much from my cell phone company.
And what does this have to do with Wi-Fi?
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
CEO of company that would lose customers is city wifi is deployed makes argument against wi-fi.
More at news 11....
What Verizon needs is a good 'ol common man smack-down... Internet users of the world: UNITE!!!
Are you kidding me? Why would a person buy a cell phone unless they are lead to believe it works in the area they live in??
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. But after the PUC suspended the rule a month ago, Verizon shortened its trial period to 15 days to match its 15-day return policy in other states. "We think there is a deal," he said. "We invest in the business and have the best service. But when you sign up with us, we'd like you stay with us."
Is this interview a joke? It has to be a joke.
This is what a monopoly is. When some CEO gets so arrogant they can act like that. In this case, it is a bunch of companies acting in collusion.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
...buggy whip manufacturers call automobiles "a passing fad".
in many areas not just software. This time it's a business model being threatened which starts the FUD just like MS does with Linux.
Verizon is evil generally and since having cable modem and Vonage I haven't paid a bill to them in at least two years. The charity I volunteer just switched to Vonage from Verizon and they are saving a couple of hundred a month.
Verizon has many reasons to be upset but technology marches on. You can't control everything. Learn a lesson from MS and their attempts to FUD Linux.
From: Advertising Department
To: Ivan S.
Cc: Slashdot
Re: Your Recent Interview
Dear Sir,
Recently we've been spending a lot of money on a good campaign to convince America we have good coverage. We think we've been doing a good job of it.
Unfortunately, it has come to our attention that you made certain comments about Verizon's coverage, namely, 'Why in the world would you think your (cell) phone would work in your house?'
To keep our image from suffering in the eyes of the public, our response (i.e. damage control) will need to be quick, bulletproof, and all-encompassing. Thus, our final words:
AHH HAH HAH HA HA HA HAHAHAHAHAAAAH! LET THE MONEY FLOOD INTO OUR DEPARTMENT, FOOL!!!!
Many Thanks,
the Advertising Dept.
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
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!
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
"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.
I used to be a Cingular customer, then switched to Verizon. Superior cell phone service and in more areas. Cell phone reception isn't perfect everywhere, but I'll pay the company that gives me the best reception.
BTW, Verizon is not a monopoly. They aren't the largest cell phone provider in the US anymore.
"It sounds like a good thing, but the trouble is someone will have to design it, someone will have to upgrade it, someone will have to maintain it and someone will have to run it."
uhh. yeah.. why can't it be the city that pays for that part? because the city would get a too good deal?
"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."
uhh. I hate to break it to all of you - but here in Finland.. the cellphones actually (99.99% of time) DO work in normal cellars and elevators(they rarely work in big underground bombshelters though but that you can forgive). like, wtf? verizons boss thinks that it would be too much to ask for that, that the phone would work in your house? is he fucking bonkers? who would buy cellphone connectivity from a loonie that thinks it shouldn't work inside?
and what the fuck has that to do with the city offering the wifi for free, for all he should care he should be trying to SELL HIS COMPANY to be the PROVIDER of those networks - like he said, someone is going to have to build them, someone is going to have update them and someone is going to make a buck out of providing that SERVICE to the cities - he totally fucking fails there(well, he doesn't fail, he knows that if the municipally built networks don't become a reality then overpriced wireless connections in those areas will continue to sell providing them with a good margin, thing is, he trusts too much that his company would be the winner in that case, so much that he doesn't want to even try to make the other thing happen which would be verizon providing those municipal networks...).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Segway CEO calls bicycles "gay as hell."
hello dear sirs my name is jamesh i are india (bihar) can u guide me install red had linux 9?
if municipalities considered contracting with verizon for installation or maintenance work on the system.
"Why in the world would you think your (cell) phone would work in your house?"
Uh, because it's not covered in tinfoil? Because my am/fm radio works? Because my friends' phones work here? Because not every cell system sucks as hard as verizon?
Seidenberg gets an F in PR.
municipal wifi is a great idea if you want to lock in 802.11g as the standard for the future... being able to sell homes and businesses wifi technology is what keeps pushing the technological envelope... want to kill wiMax? Support municipal wifi.
Amazing magic tricks
the claim that a city like san francisco is going to be totally unable to handle the logistics of wifi is, well, ridiculous. cities have to juggle a lot more than phone networks: they have to handle the logistics of roads, libraries, health services, schools, etc. --- a task which in my totally uneducated opinion appears to be substantially more complicated than running a wifi network.
the rest of the article seems to serve only as proof that seidenberg and the industry he serves is full of proud egomaniacs.
'Why in the world would you think your (cell) phone would work in your house?' I find this really odd as someone that ditched my land line and now *only* use my cell. The number one requirement with that was that I could use it anywhere in my house.
I work for a large-ish company and as such have the luxury of being able to take test units home from all of the vendors. We ended up with T-Mobile, but the main reason for that was that I can be in my basement and still talk on the phone. On a humerous aside I have a friend who has Verizon and can only manage to get text messages out of his house. I guess I can tell him now that it's just because he has 'unreal expectations'. (My phone works just fine in said same house.)
It's really about the service folks. If Verizon was the only carrier that worked, that's where I'd be. When my city lights up with Wi-Fi, that's where I'll be doing VOIP. At least I can rest easy knowing that Verizon won't be bidding on that project.
Next thing you know, Evian will come out and say that drinking tap water is a bad idea. Microsoft will say that running Linux is a bad idea. Just then, Harrison Ford will pop in to say "I've got a bad feeling about this..."
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
This is due to the superior construction of European socialist toilet paper. It breaks down easily out of environmental concerns. The ugly Americans with their bourgeoisie toilets and toilet paper! Their capitalist evil wiping schemes never stop!
'640K ought to be enough for anybody' -- Bill Gates
'We think there is a world market for maybe five computers.' --Tom Watson
'Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?' --Samuel Goldwyn
'Municipal Wi-Fi is one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard' -- Ivan Seidenberg
Unknown host pong.
Europe uses GSM coding. Verizon is CDMA, I believe, which is one step ahead of soup cans with string between them.
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
Perfect. Something about the term "buggy whip" makes me want to laugh anyway, but the comparison is apt. The telecoms think the world is going to slow down for them, so they can turn their behemoth organizations around and fight the next battle. While they're busy fighting their wars of industry consolidation, the technology is outpacing them.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Having worked for one of the larger cellular providers I can answer that question: Because customer are told that their cell phones will work in their homes.
In addition, cell phone companies (CellularOne for example) are trying to get folks to use their cell phone as their only phone, therefore one would expect it to work in your house.
http://www.busyweather.com/
They belong to corporate america and are dispensed by the FCC which is under the control of corporate america.
Radio was a nice way to deliver 'censored' and 'politically correct' information to the masses but....
a new competitor has arrived. It's name is Wi-Fi and it scares the hell out of the cozy 'good ole boy corporate-government' network at D.C. because it costs them $$$ for all that spectrum they paid billions for.
It's just a matter of time before public pressure forces the SELLOFF of the corporate radio networks back to the government or some other WiFi businesses. Nobody wants one way RADIO anymore.
The FCC should NOT be in the position of selling spectrum to the highest bidder.It should be handing spectrum to WiFi networks where it will be used alot more efficiently and help serve the most people.
Verizon (and comcast for that matter) are fighting Philly's attempts at free wireless network.
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/11410060.htm
-- soldack
Verizon doesn't make any money from that.
That's probably the dumbest thing the CEO of Verizon ever heard.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
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...
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.
It's a funny thing about context. Some people see it, some people don't. What you've chosen to ignore is that in one paragraph he disses San Franscisco's proposed infrastructure based on ongoing costs, and in another paragraph admits the reason they want MCI is to grab THEIR infrastructure. Nothing about the costs of THAT, though no doubt Verizon will be passing that on.
The man is a hypocrite, and you are indeed a stupid plebe for wasting your time on a site you apparently hate so much.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
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.
Letter To Iran
The FCC gives out some tiny sliver of the spectrum that can be used by the everyman without a federal license; why should private businesses be allowed to use a significant portion of the spectrum for their own for-profit business? It'd be kind of like Clear Channel setting up radio stations on the walkie-talkie and CB bands.
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.
"If Municipal WiFi is adopted the Terrorists Win." - Verizon CEO
This Message brought to by Verizon Wireless. Talk to friends and family for free*
* Fees apply.
First and foremost is our decentralized government. In order to put up cell towers, permission of the local government authority is required. In New England, this is at the town level. There are 351 of these in Massachusetts alone. In some cases, like the towns of Lexington, Weston, or Wellesley, cell coverage is very spotty for all vendors because the towns won't let the carriers put up enough cell sites to blanket the area. The excuses given are varied, but tend to revolve around not wanting to "spoil the view", or earth-and-crunchy concerns around "not wanting to bathe the neighborhood in "radiation" that Could Cause Cancer or other fine diseases.
Other than that, the rest of the reasons probably devolve down to logistics: can the phone companies get power (redundant if possible), equipment, and fiber-optic cable (to carry the calls) run out to where the cell site is without incurring drastic costs? Even in built-up New England there are still plenty of places where the answer to that appears to be "No", or perhaps "Not Yet".
At least this is what it seems when I drive along U.S. highways and some Interstates and see "No Service", "Digital Roam" or "Analog Roam" on my cell phone.
The landline phone companies operate under the requirement to provide Universal Service. I wonder if it's time for the cell phone companies to be put under the same requirement in order to keep their chunk of spectrum?
San Francisco wants to perform a public service, and Verizon is only pissed because they lost an opportunity to grab a buck. These greedy businessmen would charge us for the air we breathe if they could get away with it. They are nothing but bloodsuckers.
How ya like dat?
Then why is the Verizon guy talking about cell phones?
-insert a witty something-
"Get the convenience of ONE-BILL for all your Verizon local, long distance, DSL, and Verizon Wireless services at no additional charge." --from Verizon's web site The jokes aren't so dumb now, are they?
Also they have the worst logo in all of recorded history. Even if they didn't suck in so many other ways, I'd still avoid Verizon just so I wouldn't have to see that godawful logo every time I looked at my phone.
Monopolies and oligopolies are really capitalism gone wrong.
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 as we speak.
Telecoms providing tariffed services subject to government regulation are not fans of change. Anything they can do to inhibit change and protect their current revenue stream is something that they will do. Some less well-informed people will read his comments and think twice about investment in new technologies. Therefore, mission accomplished for him.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
And expensive-to-cancel contracts help us do that because, well, frankly, otherwise we'd have to keep improving our service and that's expensive!
At this point, the phone call abruptly ended: he entered a tent.
Throw the term "Community" or "Socialism" on Big Brother seizing control of private communication and people normally "commited" to choice and privacy will rejoice and throwing it all away.
So what if the government controlling Internet access means that the police will be able to monitor your communications without a warrant (After all, you are using THEIR wifi network, they are free to monitor the traffic all they like)... so what if your location will be tracked by the government (if they are operating a grid of wifi stations, they can determine where you are by which cell you are connected to)... So what if it means the people providing wifi will be obligated to enforce every rediculous court order (RIAA banning file sharing, some religious nuts banning "pornography" and info about birth control). Running against the Mayor in your town? How do you know your private browsing history, emails, etc., won't end up in the hands of the public? (oh yeah, I forget, the government never leaks secret information!). And instead of having your service shut off when you don't pay your bill, when you don't pay your Internet tax you will be sent to prison. And sure, I am sure government wifi service will be great once there is a government monopoly on it. Yeah great... if I don't like my service provider now, I can find another one... but with the government running it I can expect the same great service one has come to expect from the U.S. Postal Service, public schools, the IRS and DMV. Fantastic!
"The government running wifi networks won't stop private companies from providing the services!" you say. Oh really? How many people can afford to pay for Internet service twice? Once for the government wifi tax and one for your private service. How many private buisnesses will bother setting up wifi networks when for the 10% minority of people concerned about privacy?
Are all the geeks at Slashdot thinking they are gonna make it rich with big government wifi contracts? Or have even the Slashdot crowd become a bunch of government worshiping suckers, with absolute blind faith in the government?
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Most government run programs in the US cost far less than comparable private sector alternatives. Most things that are private in the US that are public elsewhere cost far more. There is simply no evidence that government costs more to do projects, this is republican propaganda.
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.
Also, most DSL systems are fairly oversubscribed, in terms of number of users per megabit of upstream bandwidth. So to do a rooftop network, you put more real bandwidth in the wired sites and do the oversubscription out on the radio side instead of in the DSL router side, and it works fine.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
is health care. We Americans pay more money for less health care, most of it due to massive amounts of bureaucratic overhead in the supposedly "efficient" private sector.
Is Universal health care in other countries perfect? No, of course not.
But UHC is better than a sixth of the population simply having no health care coverage whatsoever and many beyond that having inadequete health care coverage. Better than half the people declaring bankruptcy doing it because they got killed by medical costs. We're getting screwed by the insurance companies here.
And before some dittohead chimes in with "malpractice costs" talking points, insurance companies are screwing us there too. Lawsuits and payouts have been trending downwards for years but insurance rates keep going up. Some of it is due to the insurance companies making poor investments and getting killed in the stock market. But mostly it's just greed. If you need any more proof of how malpractice "reform" solves nothing, check out how rates in the states that have imposed limits have gone up faster than the states without them. Go figure. A Bush-sponsored solution that solves nothing. Whatta shocker.
Universal health care would slash huge amounts of overhead out of the costly and inefficiently run health care industry, provide better health care for Americans and make businesses here(especially small ones) more competitive with each other and with others overseas.
What's really funny is that the US, which is the single most capitalistic country in the world, and praises competition, has much less competition in the cell phone industry than semi-socialist Scandinavia, where the service providers are regulated.
Here in Denmark the providers are required to cover the entire country (of course it isn't that big,) and vendor lock-in is avoided by forcing them to transfer your phone number to another provider if you want to.
I notice that imperial CEO's always self-destruct, like Jerry Levin of Time-Warner, who sold his company to AOL just before the Internet company crash. Perhaps that's why the Verizon CEO sounds so arrogant.
I don't pity the telcos either. But the US ppl have a bad deal and don't know it.
They often serve and worship Capitalism (blindly). Whereas capitalism should be serving them. (same for their "Democracy").
The fact that US CEOs and other members of the US ruling class (like politicians) can say such stupid things doesn't usually mean they are stupid. It often means they believe most of the US public is stupid and saying such stuff will be beneficial.
That said, it's too expensive to have full coverage in the USA. It's huge, and not so densely populated. Coverage in cities should be OK. But coverage in sparsely populated suburbs may not be as good.
Thing is competition in such things isn't necessarily such a great idea. Because you have multiple competitors putting money into covering the same areas. Some will cover some areas and some won't. That isn't so efficient.
So sometimes even an inefficient state held monopoly might actually turn out to be more efficient (and provide better service) than 4 private enterprises battling for the same thing.
Sure you can put in artificial rules to try and make the private enterprise do stuff you want. But it's not all as rosy as some "capitalism" advocates say.