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Verizon CEO Says "We Will Hunt Heavy Users Down"

Posted by timothy on from the from-his-secret-soundproofed-bunker dept.

Zerocool3001 writes "In an interview with WSJ editor Alan Murray,Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg talks about how the FCC's broadband access studies are wrong (and the US is definitely 'number one, not even close'), how he had someone else stand in line for him Saturday to pick up his iPad, and how Verizon will soon hunt down, throttle and/or charge high-bandwidth users on its network."

43 of 738 comments (clear)

  1. Come to Verizon! by butterflysrage · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Pay out the nose for our high speed internet! but if you dare use that speed we will lock you up.

    --
    the preceding post was not spell checked... suck it.
    1. Re:Come to Verizon! by ircmaxell · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Actually, that makes me wonder if Verizon would be liable for false advertising based on that... They offer you 15mbit internet, and then cap you at 1gb/month. Sure, they may say that in the fine print but would a good lawyer be able to get around that (basically saying that they implied unlimited transfer based on the main advertisement)? I mean I've never heard anyone say that there's a cap on it... Car companies aren't allowed to tell you that you'll get 400mpg, and then put in the fine print that it will only happen if you are coasting down a hill with the engine off. Making your product look better in advertising is nothing new, but doesn't this come down to blatant coercion?

      --
      If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
    2. Re:Come to Verizon! by Runaway1956 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      He's laid more fiber from Washington to Boston than all of Europe. Hmmm. He's probably telling the truth. If Verizon has laid one mile of fiber somewhere between Washington and Boston, and they don't own a single foot of fiber in Europe, then he's technicaly telling the truth. Or, if we choose to look at that another way, European telcos have not put down any fiber between Washington and Boston - so Verizon has laid more fiber than all of Europe.

      But, he's obviously trying to claim that Verizon owns more fiber between those two cities than all of the governments and telcos in Europe have ever put down, combined, in Europe. Which seems pretty preposterous. I'm willing to bet without even googling that is a lie.

      BUT, from everything our European freinds write here and elsewhere, their service covers them EVERYWHERE. Gigabyte service even out in the boonies. Our boonies still depend on dial up phone modems.

      The braggart loses, no matter how we slice and dice his comments.

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
    3. Re:Come to Verizon! by theaveng · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They never said your connection had an unlimited number of bytes. They only advertised the speed you can expect to get, upto the advertised byte limit. (For Comcast it's 250 GB; don't know Verizon's limit.)

      No doubt Verizon is also getting a lot of flack from their cable channels, about how users are downloading the shows instead of watching the channels.

      --
      FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
    4. Re:Come to Verizon! by ircmaxell · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They never said your connection had an unlimited number of bytes.

      True, but they never said that I should expect otherwise either (except deep into the fine print). It's all about what the average person expects, not what they find reasonable. If an ad said "This car gets 400mpg", the average person would expect it to mean 400mpg averaged over a tank not an instantaneous value at some point in time. I guess my question is if you said "This plan has 15mb/s" to the average person, would they expect that to be the peak instantaneous transfer rate, or would they expect it to be the average value over a period of time (that you could transfer approximately 4.8TB over the course of a month)? I would think the latter. Plus, if you look at datacenters and web hosts, they explicitly state that you get 200gb of transfer on a 100mbps link, or a 100mbps link billed at 98%, or a unlimited 100mbps link. If I just told you that you were purchasing a 100bmps link, which would you (the average person) infer from that? I would assume one of the latter two, since 200gb is a LOT more limiting than 100mbps (and hence would normally be the disclosed factor). And that's the whole point...

      --
      If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
    5. Re:Come to Verizon! by EdIII · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Making your product look better in advertising is nothing new, but doesn't this come down to blatant coercion?

      No, It's a blatant fucking lie

      They say 15mbit Internet and unlimited. Well geee... what would be the unlimited part? I would think most people would expect that the unlimited part is how much you could transfer in a billing period.

      If that is true, then Cox advertises one thing and then delivers something else. Especially, since the last time I checked the dictionary Unlimited meant, "without limitations"

    6. Re:Come to Verizon! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm guessing you have 1 Mbit judging by your numbers? That might be fine for you, but seeing as 100 Mbit is the lowest I could get even if I tried here in Sweden, I can't imagine going back to what I had literally 14(!) years ago. And no, I'm not saying I need 1 Gbit/s (my current speed) 24/7, however, once you experience how fast your every day Internet becomes, there's no turning back.

    7. Re:Come to Verizon! by barrkel · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The US has a large advantage in that it is an affluent, monolingual and fairly culturally homogeneous single market. Capital costs of innovation can be amortized faster in the US than anywhere else.

    8. Re:Come to Verizon! by theaveng · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's all about what the average person expects

      Not correct. The judges go by what's written on the page, not by random guessing. If there's no mention of a rate cap, but there's a clause that says "this contract may be altered at any time by XYZ corporation," then the judge will find in favor of the letter of the contract. i.e. They can install a 250 gigabyte cap later on.

      Of course the moment a contract is altered, the second party (you) has the right to cancel it.

      --
      FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
    9. Re:Come to Verizon! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I'm sure government-loving psychos will insist they get federally regulated anyway.

      Just as I'm sure the corporate-loving psychos will demand the right to get raped by corporations.

      "I don't give a damn about some socialist European country! We need the right for Verizon to rape us at their will! In a free country, individuals have no rights except for the right to own a gun! We don't care how much higher European standards of living are!"

    10. Re:Come to Verizon! by theaveng · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'm talking about false advertising (which falls under the FTC).

      Show me some please. Thank you. I've not seen any ads that advertise unlimited gigabytes. - BTW for the record, the contract supercedes the ad. You're expected to see the ad as a "hook" but then read the contract for the fine print, because it's the contract which carries your name, not the ad.

      --
      FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
    11. Re:Come to Verizon! by Kozar_The_Malignant · · Score: 3, Insightful

      >They say 15mbit Internet and unlimited. Well geee... what would be the unlimited part? I would think most people would expect that the unlimited part is how much you could transfer in a billing period.

      I agree with your sentiment, but there is a different usage of "unlimited" that has more currency in the land of ISP. That is in relation to time. Used to be plans had limited numbers of minutes that you could be online. So, perhaps they mean you can be online an unlimited number of minutes at high speed, but you just aren't allowed to do much. Verizon are still scum, though.

      --
      Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
    12. Re:Come to Verizon! by MaWeiTao · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Pretty much every other nation on Earth has a more homogeneous culture than the United States. This is reflected in the fact that entertainment is more diverse in terms of content and cultural appeal.

      Neither is the US more monolingual than most European or Asian nations. Head down to the DMV and you can probably get a test in most languages. In most other countries you might get English if you're lucky.

      I do agree with you that the US has a higher level of affluence than most nations. Actually, it's more accurate to say Americans have more disposable income, probably because they get to keep more of what they earn. Japan is one of the exceptions, which is why they've got such a strong market and my companies that make consumer products thrive there.

    13. Re:Come to Verizon! by mcgrew · · Score: 2, Insightful

      So... you propose a new disclaimer for ISP services - "15Mbps downhill in a hurricane."

      My car computes its gas mileage on its own, and gives either an average since the counter was last reset, or mileage at that particular point in time. Once on a straight, empty back road a passenger asked how fast it would go, so I showed her (until she said "ok ok slow down"). I found that the mileage indicator stops with two digits; as I was coasting, the "at the moment" reading steadily rose to 99 mpg.

      With the cruise set to 68 it gets between 27 and 33, depending one weather. With the cruise set at 50 I once got an average of 36, despite its old style EPA rating of 35 highway.

      It gets between fifteen and twenty in town, and that's more dependant on how many red lights I get.

      But the GPs point was that car companies don't advertise 99 mpg, or even 36 for that car. And the way they estimate mileage now, their estimate would probably be closer to 25 highway, 12 city, despite the fact that I consistantly get better than that. ISPs shouldn't advertise "unlimited" plans unless you can use all you want, and they shouldn't advertise 100 mbps unless they actually deliver.

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
    14. Re:Come to Verizon! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Depends - do fat people count extra? If they do, every Wal-Mart should be worth about 1 million Japanese citizens. :)

    15. Re:Come to Verizon! by mcgrew · · Score: 2, Insightful

      With any kind of monopoly like cable, electricity, water, high speed internet, It's my opinion that the government shouldn't regulate it, but own it outright (preferably local government). My only option for high speed is Comcast. Like the electric company (but not as much; electricity is harder to do without than internet), they don't have any reason whatever to give me good pricng, customer service, or whatever; I'm a captive audience. I would rather my electric company (which is owned by the city) provide my internet. And you don't even want a monopoly utility to be regulated? That's more than insane, it's batshit crazy.

      Lack of government is anarchy, and anarchy always leads to monarchy -- the very worst form of government. So saying "government-loving psychos" just shows your ignorance. Too much regulation is bad, too little regulation is bad, and of course bad regulations are bad. To to say "regulation is bad" is just stupid.

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
    16. Re:Come to Verizon! by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 3, Insightful

      queue is 1:a braid of hair usually word hanging at the back of the head. 2:a waiting line especially of persons or vehicles. 3 A :a sequence of messages or jobs held in temporary storage awaiting transmission or processing. B: a data structure that consists of a list of records such that records are added at one end removed from the other. cue is 1:half a farthing. 2:the spelled form of the letter q.

      All of which is true, and none of which has to do with the correct use of the word "cue." Just out of curiosity, which of the definitions you quote do you think makes "queue" correct in this situation?

      --
      The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
    17. Re:Come to Verizon! by Protoslo · · Score: 2, Insightful
      I agree in principle that all of this comments about the internet penetration were just sophistry...and I didn't actually include the funniest one:

      So they will say, if you go to Korea or you go to France, you can get a faster Internet connection. Okay? That could be true in some companies -- in some countries. The facts are that, in the U.S., there is greater household penetration of access to the Internet than any country in Europe.

      In Japan, where everybody looks at Japan as being so far ahead, they may have faster speeds, but we have higher utilization of people using the Internet. So our view is, whenever you look at these issues, you have to be very careful to look at what the market wants, not what government says is the most important issue.

      Conclusion: the market wants slow internet! The market is a bit confused about data plans, but that seems...excessive. He actually segues into saying that what the market wants is their cellphone service, maintaining a semblance of credibility. Still, I think everyone should read the whole transcript. Seidenberg is a good speaker, and he comments somewhat candidly on Verizon policy and strategy (the obliquely, the rest of his industry). One must keep in mind his opening joke, however:

      SEIDENBERG: You want me to hang myself on this one -- (laughter). You realize there are three people from the White House in the ceiling -- (laughter) -- listening to what I have to say.

  2. Dishonest by clone53421 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If they don’t want people to use the bandwidth they’re given, they shouldn’t advertise that they offer that much bandwidth.

    --
    Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
    1. Re:Dishonest by TubeSteak · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Murray: You didn't stand in line on Saturday? [For an iPad]

      Seidenberg: No, I had somebody else stand in line. (Laughter.) But we had people standing in line.

      With that sense of entitlement, I'm not surprised he's so angry with heavy downloaders using their service to its fullest.

      --
      [Fuck Beta]
      o0t!
    2. Re:Dishonest by Delwin · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Cox Communications is clear on their per-month usage caps so at least you know what you're buying.

  3. Oh No, you're using the service you paid for! by Skarecrow77 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That is unacceptable!!

    Now would you like to buy a bigger bandwidth package that we won't let you use? How about switching to FIOS, the best bandwidth in the country outside of a T3... that we still don't want you to use.

  4. Yaay by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Now that they are finished deploying fiber, they have to spend their time doing something, right?

    I'm against big government just as much as anybody, but it's high time to realize that we can no longer trust our critical communications infrastructure to these clowns.

  5. Yea. please tell me where are the by unity100 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    morons who were arguing it was better to let companies 'regulate themselves' ?

    now the people will be 'hunted down, throttled/charged' for the service they have ALREADY PAID FOR, in full.

    --
    Read radical news here
    1. Re:Yea. please tell me where are the by Compholio · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'm an aforementioned moron. The argument is very simple; it's much more effective to let Verizon shoot itself in the foot than to pass a law with potentially harmful side effects.

      That would only be true if there were economic incentive for Verizon to change its behavior. Verizon isn't actually shooting itself in the foot because the vast majority of people will continue to purchase service, only the minority of customers who actually attempt to use the service to the full extent will suffer.

    2. Re:Yea. please tell me where are the by Protoslo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The real morons here are you and those you modded you "Insightful". The quote is about offering new data pricing plans for cellphones, in the future . No one's contract has been, or is going to be, violated. You can against those policies if you want to, but simply tearing down ridiculous (but emotionally appealing) strawmen adds nothing to the rationality of the discussion.

    3. Re:Yea. please tell me where are the by noidentity · · Score: 2, Insightful

      So why the hell are all these people still giving said companies money? Stop supporting them and they'll go bankrupt.

  6. iPad by blind+biker · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Owning the iPad seems to accrue more and more douchebag bonuspoints, these days.

    --
    "The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
  7. Re:want more bandwidth? by Skarecrow77 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Because that's not how it was sold to people.

    If your water was sold to you "up to 10,000 gallons a month for only $39.95!" and you sign up for it... then on day #13 someone knocks on your door saying "uh, you've been taking some mighty long showers. we're going to have to charge you extra, even though you havn't come close to your 10,000 gallons yet", you might be pissed.

  8. Re:Throttle me? by dwiget001 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When customers become "the enemy", the company needs to find something better to do with it's resources, IMHO.

  9. Re:want more bandwidth? by Qzukk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    then pay for it.

    If you sell me an "up to" 1mbps connection, then I've paid for up to 1mbps. If you want to sell me a 250MB/mo connection, go right ahead and do that.

    Don't sell me an "up to" 1mbps connection then come along and claim that its actually 250MB/mo and send your sockpuppets to demand that I pay more.

    --
    If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
  10. Wow by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Well, I was gonna get FIOS.

    --

    "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  11. Just like insurance companies... by RyanFenton · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The basic story here is the same with insurance company representatives commenting about the state of US healthcare...

    It's all about finding a very small selected slice of data that shows "We're #1 in the world!!!1!!ONE!", in this case about internet access (thanks to legacy phone modems), then pretend that misrepresented data represents the entire market.

    But the bullshit only starts there - the REAL problem, it is asserted, are the people who "exploit" the service provided to them, in order to actually ask that full service advertised be provided to them. You know, like insurance customers who actually get sick and need financial support promised to them - those folks, and people who watch too many videos are the REAL problem with the system!

    So, serving the interests of the real valued customer, the stockholder, they proclaim a holy jihad against the users of their service who don't give them good enough return in terms of contracted usage of service. Same scam, different sector.

    Ryan Fenton

    1. Re:Just like insurance companies... by radtea · · Score: 1, Insightful

      So, serving the interests of the real valued customer, the stockholder, they proclaim a holy jihad against the users of their service who don't give them good enough return in terms of contracted usage of service.

      But it's what "the market" wants!

      Whenever I hear one of these wankers talking about "the market" I want to reach for my sidearm. They're just saying, "What I want matters. No one else counts for anything, and we'll do anything we damn well please and no one can stop us."

      --
      Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
  12. Re:want more bandwidth? by mikkelm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Product focus shifted from metered Internet connectivity to unmetered connectivity ten years ago. The ISPs are making a killing off of unmetered services; much more than they would with metered products. That means that your grandparents who check their inbox once a week pay just as much as the guy with the box running fifty consecutive torrents at all times. So what if you pay by the gigabyte? Then these ISPs would cease to generate profit.

  13. And they told us consolodation was good... by GPLDAN · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When the big guys (AT&T and Verizon) killed the Northpoints and the Rhythms of the world, because they froze them out of co-lo arrangements, and made access to CO's as difficult and as painful as possible, and used lobbyists to push for legal changes and litigated like hell.

    And in 2005, when MCI and Verizon merged, and the NY PSC said "ok, well at least allow naked DSL to our citizens:, you know all Seidenberg did was extend and pretend, just wait out the 30-day memory of the American press and public, then just set about killing competition again. (Source: http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=165700989)

    Verizon and FIOS will give it to you sideways, and you will smile and like it. Because, you didn't do anything to fight the mergers, call your congressperson, get out there and stop market consolidation when it was clearly headed this way in 2005. Maybe you were too busy playing Everquest, but all I know is that the efforts I put to write letters were up against an onslaught of Verizon lobbyists and attorneys. And guess who won?

    After health care, the teabaggers would go apeshit if the US-DOJ Antitrust stepped in and forced another set of breakups in telecom. But, in truth, it's what needs to happen to get back options as a consumer. Read it and weep.

    1. Re:And they told us consolodation was good... by theaveng · · Score: 4, Insightful

      >>>the teabaggers would go apeshit if the US-DOJ Antitrust stepped in and forced another set of breakups in telecom

      No I wouldn't.

      The breakup of AT&T Monopoly was one of the best things to happen, but only because it gave us choice in our telephone services. If the Comcast or Verizon Monopoly are broken apart, what would it achieve? We'd still be stuck with just one cable down the middle of the street.

      What we really need is 10-20 cables running down the middle of the street, each one offering a different ISP. Imagine the present: Comcast or Verizon. Imagine the future: Comcast or Cox or Time-Warner or AppleTV or MSN or Verizon or Quest or Mediacom or Google ISP or.....

      Of course that won't happen so long as local governments keep insisting upon holding a monopoly.

      --
      FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
    2. Re:And they told us consolodation was good... by the_one(2) · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What we really need is 10-20 cables running down the middle of the street, each one offering a different ISP.

      Oooor you could mandate sharing and achieve the same thing with a lot less waste.

  14. Re:want more bandwidth? by rsborg · · Score: 4, Insightful

    my gas, water, electric are metered.

    You do realize that all of those are public utilities, and if not run by the government, are regulated heavily?

    Once you add decent, enforced regulation, I'd be happy with metered access. Til then, no fucking way I'm going to Comcast/Verizon/ATT pad their profits because they happen to, between them, have 90% of all broadband and mobile internet (last mile) access.

    --
    Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
  15. Bandwidth: A Real Estate Analogy by jwietelmann · · Score: 5, Insightful
    1. I rent a vacation home from Verizon.
    2. I decide that I like the vacation home so much that I move in full-time. Verizon happily continues to accept my rent.
    3. Memorial Day weekend comes. 20 families show up with their kids.
    4. It turns out that Verizon rented the same house to 20 other people.
    5. Verizon slaps me with a surcharge for "over-using" the house that I rented.
  16. All networks are about efficient sharing. by Estanislao+Mart�nez · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The problem with tiered web browsing is that unlike electricity, gas and water, the internet and technologies surrounding it have ALWAYS been developed with the ideals of unlimited bandwidth capabilities.

    That's nonsense. Any networking technology that's not point-to-point involves many nodes sharing limited bandwidth. One of the goals of packet switching is precisely to allow nodes that use some shared bandwidth intermittently to get full bandwidth during their use.

    Suppose you have 10 nodes sharing a 100Mbps network, and each of these nodes only talks about 5% of the time. What way would you prefer the bandwidth to be shared?

    1. Give each node its own dedicated 10Mbps channel. No node can then ever transmit or receive at a rate of more than 10Mbps.
    2. Use packet switching so that each node takes turns using the whole 100Mbps. Effective bandwidth depends on how much those 5% utilizations overlap, but basically, unless all 10 nodes always try to use the wire at the same time, everybody gets more than 10Mbps average.
    --

    Are you adequate?

  17. Re:Communist! by Jeff-reyy · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Too true, my friend. What is with all these consumers and their sense of entitlement? If you don't like the service that the free market provides, you are free to start your own telecommunications company and do a better job if you're so smart. Too many people want to change the way things are done without realizing that they were perfect 150 years ago before ivory tower liberals started trying to make everything "fair" at the barrel of a government gun.

    Nothing good ever came from citizens trying to govern themselves as a people. We should know our place and learn to appreciate the opportunities created for us by the captains of industry who decided not to just drive around all day listening to raps and shooting all the jobs, but to work hard and create wealth and jobs.

  18. Re:This is it. by BJ_Covert_Action · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Great! Thanks for the warning. Now, how's about we stop spouting and start trying to do something about it? Have you written your representative and senator about your thoughts with regard to regulating ISPs? Have you written the chairman of the FCC? Have you contacted your ISP and finagled your way through the customer service telephony maze to discuss your complaints with a manager who actually has some clout? Have you done research in your area to determine just what internet access options you do have other than the few big providers? Have you met with any company representatives from any of the smaller ISP's in your area and discussed, with them, ways that you may be able to help them compete with the big telcos?

    Have you done anything to help the internet?

    Or have you just posted prophetic words to Slashdot so that you could whore yourself out for some more karma?

    Now, I am not implying that you haven't done anything, but please, if you are really concerned, start taking action and stop talking so much.

    --
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