Dave Burstein at DSL Prime reports that Ivan Seidenberg effectively says the the wireline voice telecom business is dying:
“we have to pivot and make a shift from the voice business to the data business and eventually to the video business. … we must really position ourselves to be an extremely potent video-centric asset.” He further states, “The issue there is perhaps it is like the dog chasing the bus a little bit. So what I need to do is get ourselves focused around the following idea, that video is going to be the core product in the fixed line business. … I shed myself of the burden of chasing the inflection point in access lines and say I don’t care about that anymore.”
Despite Seidenberg having been one of the few telecom industry visionaries to truly embrace data/video as the future of the industry as long as 10 years ago, it still sounds strange (heretical, in fact) to hear a telecom CEO say “I don’t care about that [access lines] anymore.” On the other hand, I believe Seidenberg is correct in focusing Verizon’s strategy on the combined communications capabilities of its wired and wireless footprints. (more…)