Verizon CEO Says "We Will Hunt Heavy Users Down"

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."

Comments

Come to Verizon!

[butterflysrage]

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

Re:Come to Verizon!

[WrongSizeGlass]

Queue the theme from Jaws: "We're going to need a bigger Internet"

Re:Come to Verizon!

[theaveng]

I use Verizon DSL.

The rate is reasonable ($15), and I've never been throttled, or received notice that I used too many gigabytes. (In theory I could download 233 gigabytes each month, if I bittorrented 24/7, which I usually do.)

Re:Come to Verizon!

[Anonymous Coward]

Summary and title are misleading; article refers to the smartphone data service explicitly, not DSL/FiOS internet users.

Re:Come to Verizon!

[AliasMarlowe]

Seidenberg talks about how the FCC's broadband access studies are wrong (and the US is definitely 'number one, not even close')

I think he meant to say "definitely not number one, not even close" as that would be true. What he actually said is malformed rubbish.
The US is well behind countries such as Japan and Korea, which have widespread high speed access, either uncapped or with caps far higher than levels in the US. The Nordic countries also generally have uncapped high speed services. If you pay for bandwidth, it's there without any monthly capacity limits. I have 100/10 fiber to the house in rural Finland, and there are no caps. On bandwidth tests, I get the speed I'm paying for - all the time.

Re:Come to Verizon!

[Runaway1956]

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.

Re:Come to Verizon!

[skuzzlebutt]

Fixed that for you:

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_UjgyEXeDpYo/S74drJ79OpI/AAAAAAAAAR8/NERXd6BQXjk/s800/canyouhearmenowbitch.jpg

Re:Come to Verizon!

[ircmaxell]

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...

Re:Come to Verizon!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Come to Verizon!

[The End Of Days]

Who cares about getting it right? That's like telling people they need to masturbate a different way. Hell, it's not even "like" it, it is that exactly.

Re:Come to Verizon!

[iamhassi]

" I have 100/10 fiber to the house in rural Finland, and there are no caps. On bandwidth tests, I get the speed I'm paying for - all the time."

And you use it for what, exactly?

I've had my same 10/1 cable internet service for nearly ten years in the US. Two years ago I cancelled my regular TV cable service and went purely internet based media, streaming Hulu, torrents and iTunes to my TV. I don't even have an antenna for OTA programming. I haven't suffered, I still watch TV every night, and surf the net constantly without ever wishing for higher speeds.

If I had 100/10 fiber my activities wouldn't change. Even though I'm constantly downloading everything the internet has to offer I have never felt like I needed a faster speed. It'd be like having a car capable of 200mph when the speed limit's 65, sure it's fun to have but how often would I get to use all that power?

I think Ivan Seidenberg is absolutely right. All the tech news I've read, I don't see Japan and Europe coming out with anything amazing thanks to their faster internet services. Hulu is based in the US and only accessible to US citizens. PlayON, which I use to stream Hulu content to the TV, is based in the US. Sites I use daily, eBay, Slashdot, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Myspace and many others, all created in the US. The best phones of the past decade, Google Android/Nexus and iPhone, were both created in the US for the US network, not other countries that are suppose to have amazing wireless networks.

So tell me, all you other countries of the world with amazing fiber internet connections, what are you doing with your bandwidth? Are you using that 100mbps download often, or does it sit idly by at a few mbps 99% of the time?

Re:Come to Verizon!

[Captain Spam]

This is Verizon we're dealing with, remember...

User 1: I'm Spartacus!
*BLAM*
User 2: I'm... I'm Spartacus!
*BLAM*
User 3: Um... I'm Spartacus?
*BLAM*
(User 4 just shakes nervously)
*BLAM*
*BLAM*
Soldier 1: That last one was just for fun! No more backtalk!
Soldier 2: Look at that! We're running out of users! They must be doing something illegal! Get our senator on the line!

Re:Come to Verizon!

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

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.

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

Re:Come to Verizon!

[Zedrick]

> And you use it for what, exactly?

Downloading stuff?

I moved two months ago, from an apartment with 100/100Mb to this one, where I can only get 30/30Mb. Now it takes minutes to download the latest 24/Caprica/In Plain Sight/Criminal Minds etc. Sure, not really a problem and I'm much better off than people in the 3rd world etc etc, but the point is that you always "need" the best available once you've gotten used to it.

Re:Come to Verizon!

[barrkel]

He is saying that we have more capacity and usage then even Japan, which wouldn't surprise me as we have about 100X the number of people.

Japan has about 127 million people. Has the US increased to 12.7 billion some time recently?

Re:Come to Verizon!

[theaveng]

.....which is why I never felt the need to go for faster speeds. Why pay Comcast ~$60 a month for 25 Mbit/s service if the actual throughput (250 GB) is no different than the $15 1.0 Mbps option.

Re:Come to Verizon!

[ircmaxell]

I don't think anyone expects that they can transfer 5 TBs a month over a shared line. If you expect to transfer that much data I don't see why you expect to pay the same as the average user who is likely closer to 1 GB.

I expect to be able to transfer that much, because I purchased a 15mbps connection, not a 200gb/month connection. If they advertised them by total transfer, or priced it based on total transfer, I'd be content with paying the difference. But my whole point is that they don't. They advertise 15mbps. Period. End of story. http://www22.verizon.com/Residential/FiOSInternet/Plans/Plans.htm Actually, now that I look at it, even in the fine print do they not disclose any kind of cap on transfer. They just say that they don't guarantee the rate. Nothing about "You are allowed to transfer x GB / month" or "Subject to usage caps" or even "Heavy users will be castrated and fed to the pigs"... Only:

Connection speeds are between your location and Verizon central office serving your location. Actual download and upload speeds will vary based on numerous factors, such as condition of wiring at your location, computer configuration, Internet and network congestion, and speed of website servers you access, among other factors. Available in select areas. Speed and uninterrupted use of service not guaranteed.

It's repeated a few times on that page, but there's nothing that I can see that even remotely implies that you can't expect to use whatever bandwidth you can get to the fullest it provides you. Now sure, they could implement selective filtering based on that (the higher transfer people get rate limited)...

Re:Come to Verizon!

[NeutronCowboy]

Queue the theme from Jaws:

Cue. It's cue. As in "This is my cue to pipe in the theme for Jaws". Granted, queue can make sense in a CS-type queuing up the theme, but....

Ah, fuck it. Go mangle the English language. I'll be curled up in bed, sucking on my language-nazi thumb.

Re:Come to Verizon!

[MaWeiTao]

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.

Re:Come to Verizon!

[decep]

This thread has peaked my interest.

Re:Come to Verizon!

[Random BedHead Ed]

100 Mbit is the lowest I could get even if I tried here in Sweden

Didn't you hear the CEO of Verizon? He says we're number one! That's us in the US, not some Vikings of the north. Stop clouding the debate with your "facts."

You know, it feels like time to deregulate again. It hasn't worked for the last decade and a half, but I'm sure it will work from now on. Too bad there are no countries on the Internet except the US or we'd be able to compare broadband policies and consider something different.

Re:Come to Verizon!

[Phrogger]

> Ah, fuck it. Go mangle the English language. I'll be curled up in bed, sucking on my language-nazi thumb.

    Under the flourescent lights, no doubt. Some might say that your a looser! Their wrong, in a worser way than normal. You're comment inspires they're ire but you can likely find the compliment to it in any forum these days. It's pandemic.

    Phew,I'm glad to have that out of my system. :-)

For the wannabe language-nazis:
It's fluor, not flour. A fluorescent lamp is coated with a fluor.

"Your" is possessive. "You're" is contraction of "you are", i.e. Your belt might be loose or looser. But you're probably going to be a loser if you gamble in Lost Wages.

Worser is not a word. Never has and I hope it never is. Things go from bad to worse to worst.

Their/they're/there: "Their" is possesive, i.e. Their car is green. "They're" is a contraction of "they are", i.e. They're there already.

A compliment is a nice thing said about you: "You look marvelous" is a compliment. A complement is a match or counterpart (in the literal sense) for something. A Philips screwdriver and screw complement each other. Or it refers to a roster: The platoon is at full complement.

"It's" is contraction of "it is". Its wrong to use it's in any other way.

    Well, those are my pet peeves anyway. :-)

Re:Come to Verizon!

[Bobb Sledd]

WHAT DO YOU WANT, CUE?

Re:Come to Verizon!

[uvajed_ekil]

Didn't you hear the CEO of Verizon? He says we're number one! That's us in the US, not some Vikings of the north.

He ain't no dummy, he know that AMERICA is the best country on earth!!! We don't need no commie Sweden universal healthcare, vacation time, infant mortality rate, life expectancy, or high speed web conneckshuns, cause we're number 1!!!! Start saying it, then repeat, over and over, repeatedly, with great repetition and redundancy, and you'll believe it too! Unless you hate America and freedom, you know we're NUMBER 1!!!!

PS: Don't forget that Verizon, GM, Coca Cola, McDonalds, Microsoft, Anheuser Busch, and Fox News have what you want and are AMERICAN - trust them, no matter what they say, and give them money. Unless u r a gay-loving commie terrorist. You do love your country,right????

What Kind of Huntin' Are We Talkin' About Here?

[eldavojohn]

Verizon will soon hunt down

"The Most Dangerous Game hunt down" or the boring old e-mail notification? Because if it's the former, I might start seeding large sets of prime numbers labeled as "Natalie Portman sex tape" through my noisy neighbor's unsecured wifi network connected to his Verizon FIOS.

Dishonest

[clone53421]

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

Re:Dishonest

[TubeSteak]

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.

Re:Dishonest

[Frett2]

In his defense that quote was taken out of context. In the actual interview being quoted he is referring to his company purchasing a few iPads to explore the technology.

From the interview transcript:

SEIDENBERG: -- they want, when they do it. (Laughter.)
But, on balance, they're good for the industry. They create -- if you don't mind, I'll just -- let me extend to the iPad --

MURRAY: Yeah, sure --

SEIDENBERG: -- just to give you a -- (inaudible) -- everybody's familiar with this. So, like everybody else, you know, we're interested in it. So we had our -- some of our technology people go out and buy a couple of devices --

MURRAY: You didn't stand in line on Saturday?

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

Oh No, you're using the service you paid for!

[Skarecrow77]

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.

Yea. please tell me where are the

[unity100]

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.

This is it.

[vivin]

This is it, people! The end of the internet as we own it! After the ruling yesterday anyway... oh and also that combined with the fact that earlier this year we took a step towards corporate personhood, allowing corporations to participate in the political and legal process.

Say goodbye to the free and open internet. Say hello to the tiered-pricing model, and the metered-usage model. These companies don't care about the users. They care about the bottom-line and profits. The free market won't help here, because obviously they're going to strong-arm any competition.

Welcome to the Digital dark age. The US, the pioneer of the internet, will end up as a backwater province of the intarwebs.

Maybe I'm being cynical and alarmist. Oh well.

Re:want more bandwidth?

[bennomatic]

I'm actually with you on this. The cake^H^H^H^H flat-rate offerings are a lie. If they had reasonable per GB charges and easy ways to monitor them throughout the month, I see no reason not to go that route. A few bucks per GB in $0.01 increments would be fine with me.

Re:Throttle me?

[dwiget001]

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

Re:want more bandwidth?

[Qzukk]

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.

Just like insurance companies...

[RyanFenton]

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

Communist!

[Benfea]

This CEO is smarter and harder working than you as evidenced by the fact that he makes more money than you. You think you know better than your betters? If there was anything wrong with what he said, the magic of the Free Market would have prevented him from saying it! If you want the nannystate to do everything for you, move to a communist country like Canada or Europe with all the other collectivist socialists!!!!!!11!1!1oneone [/conservative]

Re:want more bandwidth?

[mikkelm]

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.

How he had someone else stand in line for him

[vivaoporto]

how he had someone else stand in line for him Saturday to pick up his iPad

First Murdock displays his love for it, now the CEO of Verizon not only says he wanted one, but send one of his minions to pick it up for him. If someone were trying to paint the iPad in a bad light, couldn't get it better than this.

Now what, someone using the iPad to kick puppies and stomp kittens?

And they told us consolodation was good...

[GPLDAN]

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.

Re:And they told us consolodation was good...

[theaveng]

>>>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.

Re:want more bandwidth?

[rsborg]

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.

Bandwidth: A Real Estate Analogy

[jwietelmann]

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.

Misleading Summary and Linked Article

[businessnerd]

The summary and the page the summary links to are VERY misleading and most of the rants posted above are all based on incorrect assumptions. If you want the real picture, read the actual interview. I'll try to clarify some of these issues as objectively as possible. Not arguing one way or another here, but some of the ranters need to chill out.

1. Verizon is "hunting down" heavy users of it's 3G broadband (i.e. Verizon Wireless) NOT it's FIOS or DSL. It is also important to note that Verizon Wireless does NOT offer unlimited data usage in its data plans (I'm a subscriber). The unlimited Verizon plans refer specifically to voice and text. So anyone screaming bloody murder about punishing users for using what they paid for can STFU. You aren't paying for unlimited, so you won't get unlimited.

2. The iPad. The summary and the linked article really spin this one into something it's not. According to the actual interview, Verizon (as a company) had several people stand in line for iPads because Verizon is interested in the device (as they should be) and want some to play/experiment/develop/whatever with. The CEO did not dispatch a personal assistant to stand in line so he could have his own iPad without the need to stand in line with those filthy "commoners". The summary and linked article puts its own spin in order to imply the latter, but nothing in the actual interview suggests this at all.

3. US #1 in broadband? This guy defines being #1 in broadband a little differently than the FCC and most people. While the FCC is looking at broadband speed, he looks more at broadband penetration and utilization. Now I don't know the exact numbers, and no sources were really cited in the actual interview, so this is still pretty debatable. However, I think he brings up a good point in how we rank broadband. If a country has the highest speeds available in the world, but only a select few can actually get access to it, then are they really #1 in broadband? I would argue that being the best would be a combination of speed, availability, reliability, and even cost. Again, though, some fact-checking needs to be done on this one.

In summary, Slashdot has once again gone for sensationalism, and the linked article is probably worse. I wouldn't mind it so much if it didn't spark all of these threads making arguments about things that were never said or even implied by the person in question. This is supposed to be a site for intellectuals, yet we can't seem to have an intellectual debate over the issues, because the real issues have been so clouded. I urge everyone to read the actual interview, even though it is quite lengthy. There is a lot of good stuff in there and it gives some good insights into how one of the largest companies in the country feels about issues from net neutrality to health-care. The real answers are not quite as evil as you might think.