We might expect a Verizon CEO to be lukewarm on the concept of city wide free or low cost Wi-Fi, but the quotes in this story from sfgate with the CEO could very well aggravate some Verizon customers (it rubbed me wrong):

“That could be one of the dumbest ideas I’ve ever heard,” said Ivan Seidenberg, chief executive officer of Verizon Communications, during a meeting with Chronicle editors and writers on Friday. “It sounds like a good thing, but the trouble is someone will have to design it, someone will have to upgrade it, someone will have to maintain it and someone will have to run it.”

So who cares about San Francisco except the people in San Francisco, right? Wrong. There’s an old saying: the fish stinks at the head. And as a Verizon customer, I’m smelling some stinky fish with these comments.

But it’s not enough for Seidenberg to stop at flaming free or low cost City Wide Wi-Fi, he then aims his sights on those terrible, annoying, demanding customers (sarcasm) complaining about cell dark spots:

“Why in the world would you think your (cell) phone would work in your house?” he said. “The customer has come to expect so much. They want it to work in the elevator; they want it to work in the basement.”

Wow, this guy has some mega-huge stones! I’ve never been a huge phone company fan and would use 100% VoIP if we we wouldn’t lose our established business number (no, it’s not transferable). We threw the phone company out in our home over a year ago and life has been better without their monopolistic charges and constant fiddling with local long distance rates.

“You’re getting the best deal!” They’d tell us, and then we’d talk to someone else and they were getting a better deal than us. We’d call up and complain (not to Verizon, to our prior carrier) and we’d get the lower rate. Crooked!

Thank goodness we’ve switched like 90% of our phone business to VoIP. We do have Verizon becaue its considerably less expensive than OnStar phone minutes — but when our two-year contract is up, I hope to be able to go EDO in this area and wave goodbye (again) to cell phone service. We went a couple months without cell service and it wasn’t the end of the world and I’m confident we could do it again if we could use VoiP through an EDO.

Just a few of the things I don’t like about Verizon: you can’t limit the amount of minutes on an account. We gave our oldest teenager a phone for mostly emergencies and we wanted to limit his access — not possible unless we physically take away the phone. The technology is there to lock it down, but no way do the cell carriers want to offer their customers features like this. Also, you can’t shut down their downloadable pay content. Talk about an open checkbook!

Yeah, we plan to be getting rid of your cell phone service, Mr. Seidenberg. You don’t need us customers at all, we’re just an inconvenience to people like you. The only real question I have is if Seidenberg will still be their CEO when our two year contract is up?

Dan Gillmor is dead on with his title for this story: Jerk CEOs Part 12,434.

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