TELECOM '04: Verizon and Comcast Call for New Rules

Big rewards should come from big investments, said Ivan Seidenberg, Verizon's CEO, in a keynote speech at TELECOM '04 in Las Vegas. Verizon is investing heavily to transform itself into a national broadband company, said Seidenberg, citing the company's DSL service, its EVDO Broadband Access wireless network, and now its "Fios" FTTP initiative. Seidenberg renewed his call for the nation to develop a public policy framework that encourages innovation and investment in new applications and network technologies.



Noting that cable and telephone companies have also already met on the competitive battleground of high-speed Internet services for many years, Brian Roberts, CEO of Comcast, said a new battle is being waged with voice services. Comcast's goal is to create something that is "not just traditional phone service. We want o offer phone products that offer more features, push technology forward, and grow revenues." While telephone companies and cable operators are learning to compete in this new field, Roberts said government regulation poses a grave threat to both. He asked telecom executives to join with him to "work together to capitalize on what we and all other facilities-based competitors have in common... to use our energies not to pit government against each other, but toward building a rational, deregulatory telecommunications policy that benefits all of us." Rather than trying to create "regulatory parity" between telcos and cable operators, Roberts called eliminating the regulation in question for everyone.