SPRINT = a "meltdown," a "miserable performance" and a "di..

On Mon, 21 Jan 2008 21:32:51 -0800, SMS <scharf.steven.DeleteThis@geemail.com>
wrote in <47957f66$0$84204$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net>:

>IMHO IIRC wrote:
>
>> There was an article in USA Today which stated that Verizon rejected Apple
>> iPhone deal.
>>
>> http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2007-01-28-verizon-iphone_x.htm
>>
>> Can you direct us to a source that retracts/contradicts what this article
>> says?
>>
>> OR do we just take your word for this.
>
>John isn't known for ever providing references.

That would actually be you.

>Actually when the story about Verizon passing on the iPhone first broke,
>I was sure that within hours there would be a strongly worded denial of
>the story by Apple, AT&T or both companies. The denials never came, so
>it's pretty clear that the story was accurate.

Same old nonsense.

--
Best regards, FAQ FOR AT&T (CINGULAR) WIRELESS:
John Navas <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/AT&T_Wireless_FAQ>

DTC wrote:
> Tim Smith wrote:
>> Is it accurate to say AT&T "beat out" Verizon for the iPhone? Most
>> reports are that Apple when to Verizon first, and Verizon turned them
>> down.
>
> More likely it was like two dance partners wanting to lead and the
> date was over early in the evening.

Verizon had no interest in Apple's plan for revenue sharing of monthly
fees, while Apple felt that the added upside in new customers that the
iPhone would bring the carrier entitled them to part of the revenue.

Both had strong bargaining positions, Verizon as the premier carrier in
the U.S. in terms of quality, with the largest base of retail
subscribers, and Apple with its consumer electronics marketing
expertise. Reportedly Verizon did offer a compromise where they would
revenue share on new subscribers but not current subscribers that
switched to the iPhone, but that wasn't sufficient for Apple so they
went to their second choice.

Tinman wrote:

> If you could see the forest for the trees you would have seen that the
> guy posted a link to the same damn article that was out a year ago. But
> since you hate Navas so much you never saw that and act like this is
> some sort of new development.

Huh? I know he was posting a link to last year's article, it was true
then and it's true now.

> Gotta love how one article has now become gospel, simply by being
> repeated by the clueless...

LOL, so how many articles, repeating the same facts, do you think are
required?

> And your "must be true because no one else said anything" convoluted
> logic is ridiculous.

No it isn't. When a major newspaper has a story that is negative to a
major corporation you will always see a response if the story is untrue.
In this case you would have seen denials from both Apple and AT&T if the
story was false. With Sarbanes-Oxley, you no longer have executives of
major corporations running around making up stories that are so easy to
verify.

Why do you find it surprising that Apple would have first approached the
carrier that had been adding new subscribers at a far higher rate than
its closest competitor, and that consistently is ranked as the highest
quality carrier?

Dennis Ferguson wrote:
> On 2008-01-19, John Navas <spamfilter1.RemoveThis@navasgroup.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, 18 Jan 2008 16:46:08 -0800 (PST), jgrove24.RemoveThis@hotmail.com wrote in
>> <6da5f0e5-6cf7-498b-aefc-a73189a886f7.RemoveThis@d70g2000hsb.googlegroups.com>:
>>
>>> On Jan 18, 6:38 pm, 4phun <vic.hea....RemoveThis@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Verizon's shares fell $1.91, or 4.7 percent, to $39. AT&T's shares
>>>> fell $1.29, or 3.5 percent, to $36.01.
>>> HA HA HA, shoulda went with GSM...those Lucifer radio cards should be
>>> good for some gold and silver scrap value....JG
>> Yep. CDMA has been in serious decline, and this will tend to accelerate
>> the process, leaving Verizon increasingly isolated on a shrinking CDMA
>> island, probably why Verizon shares dropped much more than AT&T shares.
>
> ?? Over the past 52 weeks Verizon shares are up 5%, AT&T up 3% and Sprint
> down 50%. The S&P is down 7%.
>
> Sprint and Verizon don't look like the ones which are closely correlated
> to me.

I'm sure that John is well aware that Sprint's current problems are
totally unrelated to CDMA. They paid a huge premium for Nextel, because
of Nextel's high ARPU, and thought they could convert all those Nextel
iDEN customers into Sprint customers. Instead, those customers fled to
other carriers.

OTOH, Verizon and Alltel's success in terms of being the top quality
networks in the U.S., _is_ partly related to using CDMA which is able to
provide better coverage and fewer dropped calls. The financial success
of Verizon Wireless is very much tied to their lower capital costs
because even though CDMA infrastructure equipment is more expensive, you
need fewer sites to cover the same area and fewer sites to provide
equivalent capacity (compared with GSM). Even Cingular admitted this,
and used it as an excuse for their poorer financial performance,
claiming that once they completed build-out of their network that their
margins would increase to close to Verizon's.

At 22 Jan 2008 22:41:05 +0000 Dennis Ferguson wrote:

> Boy, I don't see it that way at all. What I see is a losing
> competitor attempting to diminish an announcement which had attracted
> some interest by blabbing about talks that were certainly intended to
> be kept private in an attempt to make the case that they'd been clever
> not to take that deal (which really suggests to me that they were
> motivated by worry that they'd been stupid not to pursue the deal).


To be fair, the undue amount of press surrounding the AT&T iPhone deal
probably prompted a response.

> This is a low class act that it speaks for itself and needs no
> public response.

The VPs quote was measured and appropriate- it was PC (didn't knock the
product, AT&T or Apple.)

> In fact it demands no response; a response would
> only suggest that you actually care what Verizon thinks, and wrestling
> with pigs will only get you dirty too.


That's an interesting take on it that I'd agree with if this wasn't AT&T we
were talking about! The same AT&T, wo, despite having an "open network"
already, followed Verizon's "open network" pledge with their own, and who
announced the availability of a 3G iPhone be ore Apple did!

> Of course, I could be wrong since I have no particular information
> beyond the article itself, but then again, neither do you.

Agreed. It's fun to speculate though.

> To be
> clear what the job of the Verizon VP quoted in that article (and
> apparently its source) is, however, here's a quote...
<snip "closed-is-better" quote>

That was priceless! Thanks for the chuckle. To be fair, I've never heard
of a Verizon kiddie-porn spam incident so he must've been right!


> This requires no response either (especially when I look at how high
> Verizon's revenue and profit from handset sales is compared to its
> GSM competitors). This was, of course, before Verizon decided an
> open phone network was a good thing.


I'm still surprised AT&T didn't take the bait. They rarely show any
restraint.


> In any case, I don't think we'll ever know anything more about this
> until someone at Apple writes a book.

Fair enough!

On Tue, 22 Jan 2008 08:37:07 -0800, SMS <scharf.steven RemoveThis @geemail.com>
wrote in <47961b16$0$84193$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net>:

>Dennis Ferguson wrote:

>> Sprint and Verizon don't look like the ones which are closely correlated
>> to me.
>
>I'm sure that John is well aware that Sprint's current problems are
>totally unrelated to CDMA.

On the contrary -- CDMA2000 has made it difficult to migrate Nextel
customers, a problem I pointed out way back at the beginning. You just
don't like admitting that.

>OTOH, Verizon and Alltel's success in terms of being the top quality
>networks in the U.S., _is_ partly related to using CDMA which is able to
>provide better coverage and fewer dropped calls. The financial success
>of Verizon Wireless is very much tied to their lower capital costs
>because even though CDMA infrastructure equipment is more expensive, you
>need fewer sites to cover the same area and fewer sites to provide
>equivalent capacity (compared with GSM). Even Cingular admitted this,
>and used it as an excuse for their poorer financial performance,
>claiming that once they completed build-out of their network that their
>margins would increase to close to Verizon's.

Total lack of citations, as usual, but of course that's no surprise,
since that's totally false.

--
Best regards, FAQ FOR AT&T (CINGULAR) WIRELESS:
John Navas <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/AT&T_Wireless_FAQ>

On Tue, 22 Jan 2008 07:39:04 -0800, SMS <scharf.steven.RemoveThis@geemail.com>
wrote in <47960d7b$0$84175$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net>:

>DTC wrote:
>> Tim Smith wrote:
>>> Is it accurate to say AT&T "beat out" Verizon for the iPhone? Most
>>> reports are that Apple when to Verizon first, and Verizon turned them
>>> down.
>>
>> More likely it was like two dance partners wanting to lead and the
>> date was over early in the evening.
>
>Verizon had no interest in Apple's plan for revenue sharing of monthly
>fees, while Apple felt that the added upside in new customers that the
>iPhone would bring the carrier entitled them to part of the revenue.
>
>Both had strong bargaining positions, Verizon as the premier carrier in
>the U.S. in terms of quality, with the largest base of retail
>subscribers, and Apple with its consumer electronics marketing
>expertise. Reportedly Verizon did offer a compromise where they would
>revenue share on new subscribers but not current subscribers that
>switched to the iPhone, but that wasn't sufficient for Apple so they
>went to their second choice.

Still the Verizon apologist. In fact AT&T had the strongest position,
with the most customers of any U.S. carrier, and technology common to
most of the rest of the world. Verizon simply lost the beauty contest,
and then tried desperately to explain that away.

--
Best regards, FAQ FOR AT&T (CINGULAR) WIRELESS:
John Navas <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/AT&T_Wireless_FAQ>

On Tue, 22 Jan 2008 01:05:37 -0700, "Tinman" <ask.RemoveThis@for.it> wrote in
<5vlmepF1m4agbU1.RemoveThis@mid.individual.net>:

>"SMS" wrote:
>> IMHO IIRC wrote:
>>
>>> There was an article in USA Today which stated that Verizon rejected
>>> Apple iPhone deal.
>>>
>>> http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2007-01-28-verizon-iphone_x.htm
>>>
>>> Can you direct us to a source that retracts/contradicts what this article
>>> says?
>>>
>>> OR do we just take your word for this.
>>
>> John isn't known for ever providing references.
>>
>> Actually when the story about Verizon passing on the iPhone first broke, I
>> was sure that within hours there would be a strongly worded denial of the
>> story by Apple, AT&T or both companies. The denials never came, so it's
>> pretty clear that the story was accurate.
>
>If you could see the forest for the trees you would have seen that the guy
>posted a link to the same damn article that was out a year ago. But since
>you hate Navas so much you never saw that and act like this is some sort of
>new development.
>
>Gotta love how one article has now become gospel, simply by being repeated
>by the clueless...
>
>And your "must be true because no one else said anything" convoluted logic
>is ridiculous.

Nicely put.

--
Best regards, FAQ FOR AT&T (CINGULAR) WIRELESS:
John Navas <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/AT&T_Wireless_FAQ>

On Tue, 22 Jan 2008 08:03:39 -0800, SMS <scharf.steven.RemoveThis@geemail.com>
wrote in <4796133e$0$84220$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net>:

>Tinman wrote:
>
>> If you could see the forest for the trees you would have seen that the
>> guy posted a link to the same damn article that was out a year ago. But
>> since you hate Navas so much you never saw that and act like this is
>> some sort of new development.
>
>Huh? I know he was posting a link to last year's article, it was true
>then and it's true now.

Except is was just spin then, and is still just spin now.

>> Gotta love how one article has now become gospel, simply by being
>> repeated by the clueless...
>
>LOL, so how many articles, repeating the same facts, do you think are
>required?

Spin, no matter how many times repeated, is still spin, not "facts".
The only real "facts" is that the only source is Verizon.

>> And your "must be true because no one else said anything" convoluted
>> logic is ridiculous.
>
>No it isn't. ...

Saying so over and over doesn't make it true.

>Why do you find it surprising that Apple would have first approached the
>carrier that had been adding new subscribers at a far higher rate than
>its closest competitor, and that consistently is ranked as the highest
>quality carrier?

Because AT&T was clearly the stronger choice for Apple, with the largest
subscriber base and technology common to most of the rest of the world.

--
Best regards, FAQ FOR AT&T (CINGULAR) WIRELESS:
John Navas <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/AT&T_Wireless_FAQ>

In news:fvgcp39cg6n7gaonb2vojnfc40ama1olvo@4ax.com,
John Navas <spamfilter1 RemoveThis @navasgroup.com> typed:
> On Tue, 22 Jan 2008 08:03:39 -0800, SMS <scharf.steven RemoveThis @geemail.com>
> wrote in <4796133e$0$84220$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net>:
>
>> Tinman wrote:
>>
>>> If you could see the forest for the trees you would have seen that the
>>> guy posted a link to the same damn article that was out a year ago. But
>>> since you hate Navas so much you never saw that and act like this is
>>> some sort of new development.
>>
>> Huh? I know he was posting a link to last year's article, it was true
>> then and it's true now.
>
> Except is was just spin then, and is still just spin now.
>
>>> Gotta love how one article has now become gospel, simply by being
>>> repeated by the clueless...
>>
>> LOL, so how many articles, repeating the same facts, do you think are
>> required?
>
> Spin, no matter how many times repeated, is still spin, not "facts".
> The only real "facts" is that the only source is Verizon.
>
>>> And your "must be true because no one else said anything" convoluted
>>> logic is ridiculous.
>>
>> No it isn't. ...
>
> Saying so over and over doesn't make it true.
>
>> Why do you find it surprising that Apple would have first approached the
>> carrier that had been adding new subscribers at a far higher rate than
>> its closest competitor, and that consistently is ranked as the highest
>> quality carrier?
>
> Because AT&T was clearly the stronger choice for Apple, with the largest
> subscriber base and technology common to most of the rest of the world.


Why not just tell us where Apple and/or ATT stated that VZW was not the
first choice rather than just you saying it?

IMHO IIRC wrote:

> Why not just tell us where Apple and/or ATT stated that VZW was not the
> first choice rather than just you saying it?

Yeah, well don't hold your breath. Navas never has references or citations.

One person said that for Apple or AT&T to have denied the USA Today
story would have amounted to dignifying what he believed to be sour
grapes. That's highly unlikely. An executive of a large company like
Verizon has to be extremely careful with public statements because of
Sarbanes-Oxley; you can't be running around making up lies and having
them published in the media, or a lawsuit will quickly result. I worked
for a company with a loose-lipped VP who got the company into a lot of
legal trouble with his outrageous public statements.

I wonder why the AT&T shills are so unhappy that AT&T was Apple's second
choice. Geez, AT&T made a good decision, the iPhone is a success
(following the $200 price cut anyway), and it helped AT&T add a lot of
new retail subscribers, an area where they were badly lagging Verizon.

In news:47969d0e$0$84165$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net,
SMS <scharf.steven.TakeThisOut@geemail.com> typed:
> IMHO IIRC wrote:
>
>> Why not just tell us where Apple and/or ATT stated that VZW was not the
>> first choice rather than just you saying it?
>
> Yeah, well don't hold your breath. Navas never has references or
> citations.
> One person said that for Apple or AT&T to have denied the USA Today
> story would have amounted to dignifying what he believed to be sour
> grapes. That's highly unlikely. An executive of a large company like
> Verizon has to be extremely careful with public statements because of
> Sarbanes-Oxley; you can't be running around making up lies and having
> them published in the media, or a lawsuit will quickly result. I worked
> for a company with a loose-lipped VP who got the company into a lot of
> legal trouble with his outrageous public statements.
>
> I wonder why the AT&T shills are so unhappy that AT&T was Apple's second
> choice. Geez, AT&T made a good decision, the iPhone is a success
> (following the $200 price cut anyway), and it helped AT&T add a lot of
> new retail subscribers, an area where they were badly lagging Verizon.


Navas always speaks from the position of ultimate authority and therefore
there is no need for him to provide any support.

The only thing that might get Navas to change his claim is to have a video
of Steve Jobs saying that Apple was forced to go with ATT since they were
unable to get VZW to meet their demands - but then again Navas might not.

IMHO IIRC wrote:

> Navas always speaks from the position of ultimate authority and therefore
> there is no need for him to provide any support.

He follows the adage, "If You Don't Like the Facts...Go Out and Make
Some of Your Own."

> The only thing that might get Navas to change his claim is to have a video
> of Steve Jobs saying that Apple was forced to go with ATT since they were
> unable to get VZW to meet their demands - but then again Navas might not.

He might claim that it was an actor impersonating Steve Jobs.

Still, "demands" is probably too strong. They just couldn't reach an
agreement. It wasn't just the revenue sharing either, it was the demand
that the iPhone only be sold in Verizon's company-owned stores and Apple
stores, which would have upset Verizon's resellers including the big-box
stores. AT&T had less to worry about, since they probably didn't mind
upsetting resellers like Radio Shack.