At a recording of a special Charlie Rose show I attended recently Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg told Charlie that Verizon’s mission was Bandwidth, Mobility and Glass. By glass he meant the fiber-optics which he is planning to pump into 14 to 18m homes within the next 3 years. There must be as much bandwidth into the home as out of the home, Ivan said.
During an audience Q&A, I asked the CEO whether he thought WiFi, WiMax and Broadband Satellite would threaten his business objectives. Not at all, he said. WiFi was an inferior technology and WiMax will be used to cover areas not reached by ‘glass’.
I asked the question because I have this idea that WiFi and WiMax networks are going to threaten mobile carriers’ business. Vonage recently lent me their WiFi phone and it literally changed my life – no, it gave me WiLife (more later).
When the interview resumed Charlie asked Ivan what he thought about Wireless over San Francisco. "It’s dumb." Ivan replied. He said Eric Schmidt was a genius but he didn’t understand why Google was interested in the network game. "90% of Google’s business is synergistic," he said. Why compete? (btw – Rose was about to interview Schmidt after Seidenberg (and even got photo’d together as you can see). See notes of the Schmidt interview here)
Meanwhile, away from the TV studio, Google had been meeting mobile electronic vendors including Motorola and Sony to explore how their devices might be able to take advantage of municipal Wi-Fi networks, Infoworld reports.
"We’re doing everything we can to make this a playground for devices," Christopher Sacca, principal in new business development at Google, told a panel discussion on wireless technology a week after Charlie’s show was recorded. And here’s the crunch:
Hardware makers are also exploring ways to take advantage of VOIP (voice over IP), which could leave cellular operators and their per-minute billing out of the equation, he said.
Verizon says one thing. Google says another. Verizon are right that WiFi is an inferior technology – but maybe, that’s all we need right now for our mobile world. For Verizon? The word Betamax springs to mind – maybe they have backed the wrong horse.
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