Verizon chief sees 3 big wireless firms in future

Don't look for Verizon to buy a TV company like Comcast did with purchasing NBC Universal. That's one point made very clear by Verizon Communications President and Chief Operating Officer Lowell C. McAdam.

A. I think what you saw was a big push to get scale. Because when you purchase content, purchase set top boxes, all the way down to when you purchase individual elements of the network, you have to get scale to get the volumes where they need to be. We're continuing to build FiOS. Our goal has always been about 18 million homes passed.

What slowed things down a bit for us

What slowed things down a bit for us, Florida, probably only behind Arizona, was hit very hard by the housing slump, and the vacancy rate of houses, and condo complexes, and if you're smart in managing the business, you need to see how is that going to settle out.

A. I would say this business is very so then positioned to morph to meet the customer needs as they become clear. So look at an example of multi-national companies are now being tied at the same time, various offices around the world being tied at the same time, the planet is shrinking dramatically.

Because we knew they were going to be able to bring applications that would capitalize on the network competitive advantage that we have. And we've been able to take huge market share.

A. You've seen some aspects of cloud with simple consumer products like music, and streaming over-the-top content. YouTube videos are stored on a server, and you bring it down to the phone when you want it.

So the phones aren't the huge storage device that they were headed to. Perhaps five years ago, it was all about how much capacity was going to be on the phones.

That's now going to change, because the networks are so fast that you can go get content, whether that's in Africa, or China, or anyplace else. And you can get it down to your device.

Interesting story

Skype has been an interesting story. You've seen how it's changed hands. It is a innovation that everybody loves, however it is one of those things that you have to convince yourself that you can monetize it. So, it was a very, very high price, and we'll just see if it makes a difference.

They've struggled. And frankly, another operating system would be a good thing. Apple is truly well established. We've got a great relationship them. Google is so then-established.

Q. There were some analysts pondering if this would make it uncomfortable for somebody like Verizon to as a matter of fact cooperate with somebody like Microsoft if Skype's purpose is to take minutes off of the network of a company like Verizon.

A. We are moving from a voice company to a data company. I remember when we had less than one percent of our revenue was coming from data. Now we're approaching a third of revenue coming from data. And LTE (Long Term Evolution, latest standard in the mobile network technology) will take that dramatically forward.

We're developing our own innovation called Voice over LTE. It's a VOIP-like service that's tailored for the mobile environment. So we know a pure voice application is going to go away.

And video is nothing more than more 0's and 1's to move. So it's a data service. In an unlimited environment, you'd look at a Skype and go, "Oh my gosh, they're just going to load more stuff on and we're not going to get any revenue."

The market will more effectively regulate any bad behavior than any government agency can. By taking the action they took, and say let the market compete. Florida is a great place for business. You guys sent the signal to us that you're open for business. You're pro-business.

And by being pro-business in a very competitive environment, you're going to be pro-consumer. So everybody wins. It does change the way that businesses look at investments in a state in other words willing to let the market work.

In the extreme capital-intensive business

Because this is an in the extreme capital-intensive business, and if you look at any industry heavily capital intensive, you typically can only support three or four of them. Now, add to that in our market the spectrum issue.

I-Reports are repeated dispatches where we don't put an install in right the first time. It has it for copper plant. It has it for our HSI service. It has it for FiOS. I think now we've got a good balance on the major focuses of the business.

I think you'll see a balance, and over time as the research improves with Internet access, either wireless or wire-line. However I don't think this is a step-function change where everyone is going to get rid of their TV sets and go to a computer-based viewing experience.

Tendency to come

Content has a tendency to come and go. I would love to be able to go and deliver whatever content is hot. We don't have a skill set inside our business to go and buy an NBC. That's not us.