Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg admitted in
an interview Thursday that the nation's
largest wireless network was "never in
the running" for the first-generation iPhone
because Apple was focused on the GSM
technology.
Seidenberg filled in details of the lengthy
negotiation process between Apple and Verizon
in an interview with journalist Charlie Rose of
BusinessWeek.
Rose's first question focused on the ongoing
debate over the relative merits of the AT&T and
Verizon networks. "Do you expect to have the
problems AT&T had with the iPhone?" Rose
asked.
As expected, Seidenberg remained confident in
Verizon's ability to withstand a glut of new iPhone
users, citing "a little-known fact" that the network
carries "almost as much data as [AT&T]." "We
think we're ready, and we're not going to talk
much about it. We're just going to let the
performance speak for itself," said Seidenberg.
According to Seidenberg, when Apple
approached carriers about the first-generation
iPhone, "it wanted one carrier in every major
market." Since Apple was focused on just one
technology, GSM, they chose AT&T. Verizon had
"good discussions" with them, but Apple wasn't
interested in building devices for GSM and CDMA.
As such, Verizon never ended up participating in
"the sort of mating dance" that AT&T and Apple
went through, because it was "never in the
running." Over the last three years, however,
Apple has been expanding to multiple carriers in
other markets, so Verizon "did have a lot of
discussion with them over the last couple years,"
Seidenberg noted.
When asked by Rose who initiated the talks,
Seidenberg admitted that he had called up Apple
CEO Steve Jobs and gone out to visit him.
Verizon President and COO Lowell McAdam
called up Apple COO Tim Cook and went to visit
him, as well.
"We consciously reached out to them more than
once. This was the view that we had
that...eventually their interests would align with
ours."
Seidenberg praised Jobs, calling the Verizon
iPhone "just another arrow in his quiver," while
also calling the partnership between Apple and his
company strategic because Verizon is "further
along in 4G" than the other carriers. "If you do
your job well," he continued, "then in an industry
like this, eventually the right partners are going to
end up on the dance floor."
During the interview, Seidenberg cited an
"hilarious" statistic: "90 percent of the traffic on
the Internet in five years will be video." According
to the executive, Verizon is "sitting in a position to
say that between our global Internet backbone,
our FiOS [residential fiber-optic network], and
now our nationwide wireless network, we're in a
position to put all the video that anybody wants
to put on any tablet, on any device, any television
set...anything they want.
"So we can have a lot of fun in the short term
banging heads with AT&T, but in the long term
it's going to open up a new market and allow us
to work with a great company like Apple to help
us develop products."
Seidenberg said he was fine with not having the
Verizon logo on the iPhone because the network
"has already proven that we're more than a one-
device company."
"We're going to continue to do a great job on the
BlackBerry and a great job on the Droid," he
added.
After 45 years of working at Verizon, Seidenberg
will retire later this year. McAdam is set to take
over as CEO.
Seidenberg's comments Thursday were in line
with those made by McAdam on Wednesday.
McAdam told Bloomberg in an interview that the
technical planning for the Verizon iPhone took
6-9 months.
Verizon announced the long-expected CDMA
iPhone Tuesday at a media event in New York
City Tuesday. The carrier will begin selling Apple's
popular smartphone on Feb. 10 for a starting
price of $199.
Analysts expect the network to put significant
"marketing muscle" behind the iPhone 4.
Source: Http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/01/14/verizon_was_never_in_the_running_for_original_iphone_says_ceo.html
