Charlie Rose

nachtengel  06/25/2009 08:38 PM Report

In this interview I saw a very unsure man speaking with a great sense of uncertainty, and I would be shocked if Ivan wasn't relieved of his duties at Verizon within the year.

Apple has created one of the greatest cradle to grave software/hardware structures in the mobile industry, ever. It will never be matched. Not by Verizon/Motorola, not by anyone on this scale ever. Love it or hate it, there are more quality apps, and most importantly the ability to p0wn your phone left open for fanboys. It's the best of all worlds.

I have personally worked with Motorola, and they are 1000% incapable of releasing a device to compete with the iphone hardware and/or software wise, let alone the creation of their distro network. Motorola are a huge, way to heavy company for 2009, and make most of their money selling poorly made (and very very un-green) phones to 3rd world countries. It wouldn't surprise me to see them looking for gov handouts in the coming years as well, particularly as the EU and Asia impose more green standards for electronics in the coming years (and hopefully India/Africa will wise up as well).

And then there is 4th Gen, which is what everyone changes the subject to when someone asks them how will they ever make back the billions spent on the bandwidth/hardware for 3rd Gen. It's a joke. 4th Gen will come not by their pushing pushing pushing some non standard networks, but more naturally from the invention of things that are not even in their mix. People will demand mesh networks, and cloud computing in 4th gen phones, and these things are not even on anyones radar now as they are too open and uncontrollable (for making profits).

As for FIOS, I have been waiting for 4 years in a major part of Brooklyn, but still no word to this day. By the time it comes, I imagine newer technologies will appear on the market.

@ianshakil is right on the money on all accounts as well.

ianshakil  06/24/2009 02:56 AM Report

Ivan, listen, I know you don't want Verizon to become a 'dumb pipe.' You want to get into "software and apps."

You revealed that you're sort of a free market fundamentalist, so I have news for you, the market will reject your strategy. We / the consumers / the market want completely open platforms. We don't want to pay more to have fewer choices and to be given special permission to enter your walled garden full of Verizon apps.

Give us great bandwidth, great latency, open standards, fair / simple terms, but don't try to provide me with a complete experience.

TridentPRO  06/24/2009 02:47 AM Report

I've been following telco history for a while and clearly recall Bell of PA promising to bring fiber to the curb by 1996, not 2001 as Mr. Seidenberg suggests. And while Verizon is tearing up vast trunks of copper laid but never used under Philadelphia's Broad St., I still can't get FIOS service to my relatively affluent urban neighborhood, a few blocks from the old B of PA HQ. What else can't I get? It's been raining here and the old copper junction box in the middle of my street is a rat's nest of bad splices that go out when the weather gets bad. Until tonight, my high speed internet had been mostly off 5 evenings running. While I could get a Vodafone chip to use overseas on unlocked Moto phones, there's no Verizon tech solution to get those same phones on to the proprietary Verizon network. Seidenberg's assertion that the phone makers pick and choose their networks is a little disingenuous. Telco (network and device) technologies leapfrog over previous iterations and provide jarring rather than smooth upgrade paths. Seidenberg promised to roll out G4 later this year. I'm waiting to see how long it really takes and what I'll have to give up to get it. This is a business that is driven by what little competition it gets but mostly by amortization schedules of its current outmoded infrastructure and not so much by consumer clamor for choice, open architecture and state-of-the-art services. At least in Europe and Asia, government oversight and investment drives innovation that we stateside won't see for years. Telemedicine and other futuristic bandwidth on demand services that Seidenberg was riffing on are concepts that have been around since the 80's. This is not a company that is on the cusp of telecommunications technology, rather has been dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century.