Taboo words

It's instructive that Ed Whitacre's opening keynote speech at Supercomm last week received not nearly the amount of coverage one would expect from a big cheese promising to spend billions on new technology. Maybe it was because the CEO of SBC Communications was on stage at 8 a.m., when many reporters were still trying to figure out a strategy to talk themselves into the wine expo on the other side of Chicago's McCormick Place. Or maybe many in the press have heard this before and know that much of what comes from Whitacre's mouth is driven by regulatory concerns.

Whatever the reason, I was happy that he uttered a word I never thought I'd hear him say again: video.

When SBC bought Ameritech, the company also acquired a decent cable business called americast. Not great, but good. SBC promised state regulators that it would stay in the business and provide a competitive buffer to cable, which at the time was raising rates faster than the Carter administration.

Of course, that promise lasted about 30 minutes after the deal with Ameritech closed, and SBC promptly put americast on the block. (Disclosure notice: I'm a former americast customer and still a subscriber of Wide Open West, which bought the Ameritech business for a song and promptly upgraded it.) The same thing happened in California and Connecticut, where SBC ran from video like it had some communicable disease.

So now comes Whitacre, a man who at one time swore there was no link between the telephone business and video, ogling the telco TV market like a little kid on Christmas day. "This is really exciting stuff," he gushed as much as someone in his position can. I've been in telecom too long to think that SBC is going to be a competitor in the video business next year, but just hearing the word that at one time was taboo is a step in the right direction.

E-mail me at vvittore@primediabusiness.com.