It would appear that Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg is in a bit of denial. While it’s true that there are many different ways to rank broadband by country — and pretty much all of them are flawed — in general the US tends to rank about 15th on a variety of different studies. But Seidenberg is hearing none of that. When asked about it, he insists that the US is clearly number one in broadband and that it’s “not even close.” Though, as you read the details, he sort of switches back and forth between wireless and wireline — and in wireless, it’s at least a little trickier. But, no matter what, the “not even close” statement is not even close to reality.
What may be even bigger, though, was Seidenberg’s separate claim that the company is going to throttle video users:
But when we now go after the very, very high users, the ones who camp on the network all day long every day doing things that — who knows what they’re doing — those are the —MURRAY: It’s video, right? I mean, it’s video.
SEIDENBERG: But those are the people we will throttle and we will find them and we will charge them something else.
Now that’s a pretty questionable statement. Just as the government is having a big showdown over net neutrality, to have the CEO of one of the main telcos saying he’s planning to throttle video users — something that Verizon lobbyists have been saying would never happen — seems like a potentially damaging slip up.
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