In case you missed it, I wanted to pass along the remarks of our General Counsel before the House Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. Good stuff on “transformative” power of the wireless broadband now within reach.
Oral Testimony
Steven E. Zipperstein
Vice President, Legal and External Affairs
and General Counsel
Verizon Wireless
COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND THE INTERNET
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
April 15, 2008
Good morning Chairman Markey, Ranking Member Stearns and Members of the Subcommittee. It is a privilege to be with you again to discuss the results of the 700 MHz auction and its importance to the nation’s citizens and our economy. Thank you for this opportunity to share our views.
In the 10 months since I last appeared before the Subcommittee, Verizon Wireless has hired nearly 12,000 new employees – all within the U.S. – and invested more than $4 billion into our wireless network to expand and improve wireless services. American consumers expect these improvements, even in a tough economy, thanks to the historic competitiveness of wireless companies in our country. Simply put, if we don’t stay ahead of the curve, consumers will leave for one of our competitors.
We are optimistic about the future. Today, I’d like to discuss 3 important developments, which together will drive innovation and economic vibrancy over the next several years:
First: when the 700 MHz spectrum is deployed – by us, by our current wireless competitors, and by the new wireline, cable and satellite entrants – the results will be nothing short of transformative for the nation.
In the auction, Verizon Wireless won licenses for broad and deep spectrum to support a dizzying array of 21st Century products and services to the American people – things we can’t even imagine today.
The second development involves the technology we will use to put the 700 MHz spectrum to work - LTE or “Long Term Evolution.” The speed of this IP-based service will allow customers to enjoy connections matching those of today’s landline broadband networks.
Customers, application developers and device makers are excited at the promise of significantly improved download speeds. Applications will not only be brought to market by Verizon Wireless, but will come from the wave of innovation that LTE technology enables . . . especially in the realm of “machine-to-machine” applications. We see wireless health monitoring, smart home management and location-based services as three of the big categories that will benefit consumers. But there are many others: imagine auto companies selling new software to cars over-the-air instead of requiring a shop visit.
The third element of how Verizon Wireless is transforming the wireless marketplace is through our “Open Development Initiative.”
Just a few weeks ago, we successfully introduced our Open Development initiative to developers and others in the wireless ecosystem, with more than 400 people live with us in New York and thousands more via webcast and subsequently downloading the proceedings.
With a simple roadmap to bring the big dreams of developers to wireless users, new products and services should begin coming to market later this year. As we said to the development community when we launched this initiative last year, “Have at it!”
Let’s be clear: as I indicated to the Subcommittee last summer, we don’t think it was necessary for the FCC to impose a fixed, regulatory brand of “openness” on the 700 MHz spectrum auction.
Dynamic market-driven solutions, such as our Open Development Initiative and the Open Handset Alliance, will spur innovation far more quickly and efficiently than static regulatory mandates, especially in an industry as intensely competitive as ours.
While Verizon Wireless is planning how best to use the 700 MHz spectrum, and working with our minority owner, Vodafone, on global trials of 4G technology, large and small companies across the nation are conducting the exact same strategic planning themselves.
In 2008, we continue to battle with other wireless service providers in the marketplace every day, but already the competition is lining up for tomorrow’s 4G world. Of the total of 1,099 licenses up in the 700 MHz auction, Verizon Wireless bid on 615 licenses, and won 109 of them. We won about 18% of the licenses we bid on, and less than 10% of the total offered.
Clearly, other companies are set to offer services on their own 4G networks. There will be four existing national wireless companies - Verizon Wireless, AT&T, T-Mobile and SprintNextel - plus at least two new national competitors from the Cable joint venture and Echostar. Regional companies including US Cellular, MetroPCS, Cellular South and Leap/Cricket, all supplemented or expanded their existing footprints either with 700 MHz or AWS spectrum.
Wireless companies will have paid more than 30 billion dollars to the U.S. Treasury in the two 4G spectrum auctions. And as the technology industry has in the past, we will add billions more to the economy, building new coverage, improving existing coverage, and upgrading to 4G networks. These investments will fuel the job creation, innovation, and robust competition that have been the hallmarks of the wireless sector for the past two decades.
The auctions are done; now it’s about the future. People, with incredible new devices and applications, will connect with each other, and with the environment around them, in ways we can only imagine.
Deploying 4G networks on 700 MHz spectrum will unleash a host of new broadband devices and applications to rival anything available today on wired broadband networks – and yet everything will be mobile. Verizon Wireless is pleased to be a leader at this transformative juncture.