Verizon Wireless CEO urges wireless industry to get back to basics

Dennis Strigl, president and CEO of Verizon Wireless, urged his fellow wireless carrier executives to get back to the basics during today's Wireless Plenary Panel at Supercomm 2001.

"We have over complicated this business for our customers, and we need to simplify it for them," Strigl said. "Our product is not voice or data, but mobility."

Strigl said the disappointing headlines in the trade and business press concerning wireless data's failure to live up to the hype has distracted the industry from some of the basics, such as focusing on network quality and simpler pricing plans.

"Voice is king, not data," said Strigl. "It really is still voice after all of these years. Consider that minutes of use continue to increase. They could be 40% of all voice usage. That is overlooked in the 3G evolution."

Verizon will be launching 3G services this year in the form of CDMA-based 1XRTT technology. Not only will the technology provide data speeds that peak at 144 Kb/s, but also voice capacity that is two times that of CDMA, which will be critical as voice minutes continue to rapidly increase, Strigl said.

"There will be real applications in data, but 3G will be a voice-revenue generator," he explained. "There is so much fixation on technology that we're missing the point. And that is, what we are delivering to the customer."

Stephen Carter, president of Cingular, said 2000 was the year the industry achieved significant growth, but also had to deal with the failure of WAP (wireless application protocol), which many promised would deliver a desktop experience over a mobile phone.

"WAP's failure was a result of unrealistic expectations and over-zealous marketing," said Carter. "If we are to achieve success matched on voice, we have to take full advantage of mobility."

Cingular's goal this year is to increase awareness among its customers of data services. This will be done through short messaging offerings, wireless data enterprise applications and wireless gaming applications. All of Cingular's handsets will incorporate WAP browsers by the end of the year, Carter said.

"By the middle of the decade, wireless voice will be a commodity," said Carter. "A paradigm shift will occur. Traditional marketing won't be enough."