Verizon Jumps Rails, Signs Up With Android
Verizon has done a surprising about-face, joining up with Google instead of becoming their biggest enemy, at least when it comes to Google’s Android mobile phone operating system. Verizon says it is joining up in order to reduce customer service costs, as in an open architecture, it would only be responsible for making sure the phones can make calls, and not tech support for any other aspect of the handset or software.
When Verizon Wireless was founded in 2000, it ran 27 call centers to provide customer service. The company cut back to as few as 17 centers at one point, but the count is now back to 25, each with about a thousand employees. The company’s 2,300 stores, staffed by 20,000 employees, are also costly. While workers in those stores used to spend nearly the entire day signing up new customers, now only a tenth of their time is consumed by new subscribers. Instead, the bulk of their energy goes to helping current subscribers with questions and problems. McAdam & Co. decided the business model was not sustainable. “If we get to 150 million customers, boy, that’s a lot of overhead,” says McAdam.
In an open-access model, though, Verizon Wireless won’t offer the same level of customer service as it does for the roughly 50 phone models featured in its handset lineup. Though the company will insist on testing all phones developed to run on its network in the open-access program, Verizon plans only to ensure the wireless connection is working for customers who buy those devices. “They have to talk to their handset provider or their application provider if they have particular issues,” McAdam says.
If that’s Verizon’s only motivation, it’s a smart one. Reducing customer support costs and handset subsidies ultimately is great for Verizon and for the consumer, turning the industry on its head and reducing the “free phone, two year contract” mentality that is ruing the wireless industry. Verizon has been making some good moves towards openness lately, ones that may mean the company is finally wising up.
On the other hand, those of us who have followed and dealt with Verizon over the years know that, at its core, Verizon is definitely one of those “evil” companies with little regard for anything except revenue growth. Most likely Verizon isn’t trying to be the good guy, it’s trying to go with the “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, then use your insider knowledge to destroy them”.
If Google and Android winds up with an edge, Verizon can combat it, exploit it, or as a provider for it, control the spin of a competitor (for example, painting Android phones as low end and its own phones as high end). Google has to sit back and be all buddy/buddy with Verizon, and Verizon can stab Google in the back while still selling Google’s devices.
Is Verizon an undeniably evil company? Can this leopard change its red-and-black spots? No matter what, Google gets a very important network (with excellent call quality in many areas) for its platform, even if it has to fight off that network. The way to look at it? Everybody wins, and everybody’s keeping their enemies closer.
photo, titled “This is what evil looks like…“, by About The Music
I think that was a smart move by Verizon.
Comment by Steve | December 5, 2007