Verizon Communications CEO Ivan Seidenberg isn't too upbeat on the future of landlines, telling the audience at a Goldman Sachs investor conference today that the company is just not interested in telephones connected with wires. The chief exec of one of the nation's biggest telecommunications firms continued with his gospel, saying his "thinking has matured" and that trying to predict when the dwindling landline business will plateau is akin to "the dog chasing the bus." He says the new way of thinking is "liberating," but of course, endeavors like the
Hub technically don't count as landlines to the company since it'sVoIP, and the coupled with its continued success as the largest cellular provider in terms of subscriber base, yeah, we're sure it's not too tough a pill to swallow. So how abut ramping up FiOS installations just a
wee bit faster, eh Ivan?
posted Sep 17th 2009 8:42PM
At least he admits it, I guess...
I wonder when they'll try to finally pull the plug on copper in general.
Technically speaking, a fiber optic is a land line. Fios is a land line, just not one based on POTS.
The phrase is "telephones connected with wires"- FiOS was never about telephones.
Four words for Mr. Seidenberg about going wireless...
"Can you hear me now?"
FML, that's five words.
Frankly, considering how easy it is to shred our civil liberties and monitor us now that our phones, television and internet is fully digital, with a digital power grid coming soon... I'm suprised anyone is anxious to go digital. "they" basically forced us into going digital.
if their wireless network could be self sustained during a blackout otherwise it's useless if it depends on the power grid... bet they haven't thought of an emergency back-up plan for it like katrina???
That's stupid.
Great! So the last means of holding a legitimate conversation on a phone goes away, to be replaced by the same pathetically compressed garbage we get on mobile phones.
Hooray for "digital quality".
Digital -quality- ... Don't get me started on the "march to perceptual quality"
Good, who has land lines these days anyway? =]
I just got T-Mobile @ Home, and considering it was only $10 additional to our family plan, it's pretty great. The VOIP adapter also combos as a pretty good router
DSL requires that i have a land line from ATT. its only $5 a month and i wouldnt pay for a monthly cell plan. ill stick to landlines at that price
AT&T wireless customers, that's who.
FiOs in Chicago already! Tired of Comca$t!
Speaking from experience, U-Verse is pretty good and....eh....closer to FiOS than Comcast has gotten
that said, if Verizon were to throw there hat in the ring here, I wouldn't waste a minute jumping ship.
THEIR hat
$top doing that, it'$ pointle$$.
I haven't seen in a standalone landline phone in a long time. All of the ones around here got taken down by Verizon (for whatever reason) and SBC (after the AT&T merger). Now if Verizon and AT&T did in fact expand their fiber networks, I'd be quite happy. I'm stuck on the highest-tiered DSL service from the blue company. It works, but I'd rather be able to download videos, say, The Engadget Show, within minutes instead of 45 minutes to an hour.
The problem then without landlines is that when Google converts to SkyNet and takes over all the airwaves and satellites, it'll be a real pain having to break out the old radios.
well with their selection of smart phones and crippling every other phone they have they don't seem to care about wireless either.
No, you've got it wrong- they cripple because they care! It's because they love you so much that they have to give you a crippled phone!
Bus stops at every busstop, the dog must know that.
*tosses the dog into lava*
Now what?
Might be a hellhound.
What a great message to the many Verizon employees who work to maintain landline phone service. No, we're not blind to the future, and dinosaur technology or not, way to crap on all of them. I bet we'll be inspired to give 110% effort now.
Where's the marketing for digital voice over FiOS? Where's the out of franchise video serivce?
The New York Times website has a longer article where he says that video is the future key product of landlines (presumably FiOS landlines)
Though, it also talks about being able to slash central office and maintenance budgets- terrible for morale, but it sounds great for investors! Who are presumably the target of a Goldman Sachs call.
What a great message to the many Bell System employees who work to maintain telex service. No, we're not blind to the future, and dinosaur technology or not, way to crap on all of them. I bet we'll be inspired to give 110% effort now.
Verizon could save all those people's jobs if they simply built out of their territory. I live in Southern California and San Diego county is just ripe for the plucking if Verizon would build down that way. AT&T, Time Warner & Cox are no where near as good as FiOS.
Verizon could simply have their tech's from the Hemet and Menifee yard do some drive time and work those areas as well. Keep all the guys in construction with work.
I know this is from the Golden Slacks Communacopia Conference this morning, but hows about a link?
I won't believe him/Verizon until they do away with landline phone numbers as a primary means of identification. There are -still- promotions and services that cannot be accessed correctly without a telephone number.
How is VOIP not classified as a landline?
Its not wireless, its usually a regular phone connect to something then a router from router to either phone jack or cable outlet; it provides the same function as regular landline and is still connected to cable of some sort.
because it does not use the existing copper lines, its much cheaper and easier to maintain
Because it's not an individually addressable line. On VOIP, your signals are only separated from everyone else's by IDs in the network packets, not by a physically different wire.
Nicely answered 'Information Central'.
Great. Now Uncle Sam is going to start taxing VOIP with all those lovely FCC/911/Federal/State/County/City/GPS location taxes.
The Landline died a long time ago, voip is only around because its cheaper than cell service at the moment, and cheap international.
With that said, the landline died about 4 years ago , anyone that says otherwise needs a mental checkup
All big biz use circuits/pbx and asterisk
Essentially the difference between wireline (POTS) and VOIP is that, for the most part VOIP lines are pretty much exempt from state Public Utilities Commissions, hence they are UNREGULATED lines. It takes Verizon out of the regulated lines of the business. No more caps on rates and fees fro state commisions. Freedom to charge whatever they think the market will bear, without restraint. You'll still have local telephone numbers, they just won't reside in local switch centers anymore.
Maybe we the customers would be interested in our landlines if the providers added half the features Google Voice has -- instead of doing nothing for the last 15 years.
We did.. even made it free and there were few takers.
I think it would be nice if all POTS lines were converted to SIP VoIP. It would probably cost a lot less for the consumers who still do use landlines, and, once the PSTN is switched over, it would be easy to attach it to the big telcos' existing VoIP networks. Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, but that's just my thought.
If SIP trunking costs are any indication, it would not save a red cent. I'm a PBX engineer, and SIP trunking is not any cheaper than traditional digital trunking circuits, ie ISDN and T1/D4.
The whole quote sounds like a ploy to make investors happy. PRI is still the number one choice for digital trunking, and there really are not a whole lot of PBX's in the installed base that support SIP trunks. To clarify, while most newer IP based PBX's will support SIP trunking, the average business hangs onto their existing switching equipment for 8-10 years.
This is the same CEO that thinks your wireless cellular handset (by Verizon Wireless) shouldn't work at home and you're a whiner if you complain that you don't get any indoors reception.
http://www.engadget.com/2005/04/17/verizon-ceo-thinks-its-unreasonable-to-expect-your-cellphone/
That's funny. When i was trying to get VZW (Verizon Wireless) to track down harassing phone calls, i made the mistake of going to the Verizon tech guy and he laughed at me. "That's a different company." he said with scorn. Someone needs to let these people know if it's actually the same company...
That's awesome! My employer switched to Verizon for cellular. They have no coverage if you are not within 5 miles of the urban area or the interstate highway. Needless to say, I'm not. So they equip employees like me with US Cellular phones. I don't get the blinged out Blackberry, but I'd rather have just a phone anyway. Longer battery life!
I don't have a personal cell phone anyway, because work doesn't mind personal use if you don't abuse it.
Analog and ISDN maybe, the landline is here to stay.
The first few times I read through this i kept reading it as "Landmines." then i realized what was going on.
Let me see if I can translate from Corporate Roachspeak:
"See, landlines are only needed by old people who can't handle all this shiny, complicated, unreliable - and lets not forget *expensive* - cellular tech. And who cares about old people - their *old*, right? Seriously, though, the sooner we can stop maintaining all that legacy copper the faster we can pump and dump our stock before the coming apocolypse. We're pretty proud of how quickly the transition is coming along..in rural areas, dial-up modems won't even work any more, our infrastructure is so decrepit. This is the future, people, and even though we're losing market share by the hour, we not about to fall prey to the temptation to give customers *more* for their money. We're Verizon, the company formerly known as Ma Bell - and that means we're STILL a monopoly, at least in our own minds."
You seem to be forgetting that at&t has a bigger percentage of the Ma Bell companies
I still have a landline, but I haven't used it for outgoing calls in probably about two years. By the way, it's a rotary phone. No, I'm not joking.
Honestly, I think that it would be a mistake to do away with landline service entirely, for a number of reasons. For starters, what if your power goes out, and your cell battery dies? You're screwed. Another is call quality. Not as good as on a landline. Also, dropped calls. Have you ever had a dropped call on a landline? I seriously doubt it. I'm sure that there are other reasons, but you get the idea.
It's about unions. The "old school" landline business has numerous union workers represented by CWA, whereas Verizon Wireless is non-union.