SBC = Seriously Backtracking on Comments

from the like-we-didn't-see-that-coming dept

It seems like this week is the week for company PR people to need to scramble and pretend their execs didn't say what they clearly said. First, we had Samsung saying they were were building an iTunes-like music store and then pretending that they never said it at all. Now, not surprisingly, it's SBC's turn. A lot of people were surprised to hear SBC's Ed Whitacre say earlier this week that he wanted to charge companies like Google, Yahoo and Vonage for using "his" pipes to reach customers. Of course, it was only a matter of time before an SBC person had to pop up and claim that Whitacre didn't really say what he appeared to have said (found via Broadband Reports). About the only surprising thing was that it took an entire week for SBC to respond. Apparently it took that long to work out a convincing story for how he was "misinterpreted."
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  • identicon
    Greg Andrew, 4 Nov 2005 @ 3:08pm

    No Subject Given

    Yeah, he was only talking about SBC's "managed and secure" portions of their fiber-optic network. I'm sure that "for Google or Yahoo or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes free is nuts." That's what he was saying - right.

    But I still don't understand their claim. What use is SBC going to put its fiber-optic network if it's not going to let customers access web sites with it?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Jeff Macdonald, 4 Nov 2005 @ 6:22pm

      So how many cables will come into the house?

      Sounds like there be a cable for:

      *) SBC content (GBit bandwidth)
      *) Internet content (KBit bandwidth)

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Hugh mcKinney, 2 Jun 2006 @ 2:29pm

    SBC Net neturality

    I wonder if Whitacre has an OC-1 pipe to his house that terminates into an internet access point. How would he feel if Time Warner was to manage his internet access, Net Neturality my ass?

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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