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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."

26 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 WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    2. Re:Come to Verizon! by theaveng · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.)

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

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

    4. Re:Come to Verizon! by AliasMarlowe · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      --
      Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
    5. 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
    6. 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
    7. 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.

    8. Re:Come to Verizon! by iamhassi · · Score: 5, Interesting

      " 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?

      --
      my karma will be here long after I'm gone
    9. Re:Come to Verizon! by Captain+Spam · · Score: 5, Funny

      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!

      --
      Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
    10. Re:Come to Verizon! by barrkel · · Score: 5, Informative

      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?

    11. Re:Come to Verizon! by NeutronCowboy · · Score: 5, Funny

      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.

      --
      Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
    12. Re:Come to Verizon! by decep · · Score: 5, Funny

      This thread has peaked my interest.

    13. Re:Come to Verizon! by Random+BedHead+Ed · · Score: 5, Funny

      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.

    14. Re:Come to Verizon! by Phrogger · · Score: 5, Informative

      > 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. :-)

  2. What Kind of Huntin' Are We Talkin' About Here? by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    --
    My work here is dung.
  3. 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!
  4. 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.

  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
  6. 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.
  7. 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

  8. Communist! by Benfea · · Score: 5, Funny

    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]

  9. 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.

  10. 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.

  11. 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.