Let’s take a look at this first paragraph. Ahem…
Verizon Wireless, the No. 2 U.S. cellphone carrier, passed on the chance to be the exclusive distributor of the iPhone almost two years ago, balking at Apple’s rich financial terms and other demands.
Let’s read that again…
Verizon Wireless, the No. 2 U.S. cellphone carrier, passed on the chance to be the exclusive distributor of the iPhone almost two years ago, balking at Apple’s rich financial terms and other demands.
One more time? No? Ok. Now everyone go down the street and laugh at the Verizon store. Laugh, laugh, laugh. Go ahead. We’ll wait.
Verizon rejected Apple iPhone deal [USA Today]
Anyone who has suffered through Verizon’s (& previous Bells conglomerated therein) various startups knows well the mentality, or lack thereof. When they jumped into the Internet, they spent tens of millions on the most ridiculously incompetent portal ever known. When DSL started up, they were unable to provide any tech support for a year. I ended up working with the Texas VP of their DSL modem vendor; he, too, was tearing his hair out at their comprehensive corporate ignorance. They expected to connect a few wires already in place and make a huge profit. They never trained any of their employees; one supervisor decided she didn’t like the way I was using the service and while on the phone with me switched my account off! This meant not only that all of my email on the server (pre-Outlook) was lost, I also no longer had access to my address.
Now, I am proceeding through the challenge of a fiber optic connection. I commend the $18 billion Verizon decided to risk installing it, but the service nightmare starts all over…I won’t bother to detail the ten or so hours I’ve spent trying to get a number ported, etc., etc. As with Microsoft, they have a lock on a basic technical commodity. Governments, with little corresponding technical expertise, have no idea how to regulate them on the important, nuanced details. The Verizon field crews, doing the physical/technical work that actually makes up the system, are usually fantastic, but the perpetual bumbling in corporate headquarters is astounding.
great info, douglas
Yawn. Good for them. I’m so over the iPhone. There’s geekdom and there’s business. Verizon, smartly, chose the latter. The iPhone will sell OK, but is not worth any major concessions to the headset maker.
Probably better for people who want to buy the iPhone…Verizon is notorious for disabling most of a phones useful features.