National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards
Ivan Seidenberg
Las Vegas, NV
January 7, 2009
As delivered
Acceptance Remarks
After more than 42 years in the telecom business, here’s a sentence I never thought I’d say: I’d like to thank the Academy for this award. It’s especially humbling to be presented with an Emmy from two legends of the television industry, Peter Price and Sir Howard Stringer. Just to put things in perspective, Howard has received about 40 of these over his career, so I’m very grateful that he is able to be here this evening.
Howard and I go back some 15 years, to the very beginning of the journey that would put television and telecommunications in the same business. At the time, the world looked a lot different than in does today. There was barely any Internet. Very little broadband to the home. No set-top boxes to receive digital content. No digital wireless networks. Certainly no fiber-optic networks with the two-way capacity of FiOS. And precious little content in the form of the 1’s and 0’s that would be the universal language of the digital revolution.
What we did have – what visionaries like Howard helped us see – was an idea that the marriage of broadband networks, digital content and a new generation of consumer electronics would create something far different, and far larger, than either the communications or the entertainment business alone and would expand our industries beyond the narrow borders of “televisions” and “telephones.”
If we’d known the terms “social networking” or “long tail content” at the time, we might have used them. We simply sensed that the nature of our business was about to change, in ways that would have a profound effect on society.
In retrospect, it’s not surprising that our early attempt to bring about a digital content company didn’t pan out. Too many paradigms were yet to shift – in consumer electronics, in content and applications, in consumer behavior.
But the idea of the transformational power of broadband, wireless and digital technologies remained.
For Howard, that idea led him to Sony and the invention of a miraculous new generation of interactive consumer electronics.
For Peter Price and the content industry, it led to the creation of whole new genres of content for wireless, Internet, and broadband networks.
And for Verizon, it’s led us to reinvent our networks around FiOS, 3G and, soon, 4G technology – the latest in a long line of communications innovations, from the transistor to the cell phone, that have changed the way we live. Five years ago here at CES, we announced the expansion of our 3-G wireless network across the U.S., which helped turn wireless from a voice to a broadband medium. We also announced our intention to build a fiber network capable of delivering 100 megabits and more all the way to homes and business, which would provide the platform for interactive, high-definition broadband and video.
We’ve come a long way in five years.
Today, our FiOS network reaches more than 12 million homes and we’re expanding by 3 million homes a year. Later this year, we will start to deploy our 4 G wireless network. Our investments in the backbone network are helping the Internet run faster and better. The ripple effects of this massive shift to big broadband and big wireless can be felt across the industry – from the equipment manufacturers who make the cables, routers, and chips; to the software developers; to the content developers; to the consumer electronics companies who invent the devices to make this all work for customers.
And the great thing is, this wave of innovation has just begun to gain momentum.
I want to thank our Board of Directors, who had the courage to change the trajectory of our company.
I want to thank the superb engineers and technical visionaries at Verizon – some of whom are with me tonight -- who believed in the power of networks to transform our business.
I want to thank the thousands of Verizon employees who have pursued our new vision with skill and enthusiasm.
And I want to thank our many partners from all across the communications, entertainment, and electronics industries who are helping us deliver our vision to customers.
You know, the Presidential election of 2008 reminds us of what can happen when you recognize the pivot point for change and seize the opportunity to change direction, create new possibilities and open new avenues for growth.
I believe we are at one of those pivot points in our industry, with the biggest opportunities for growth and transformation still ahead of us.
We have yet to see how digital media will transform education and unleash the creative energies of our children.
We have yet to tap the power of broadband to save energy and the environment.
We have yet to use interactive technologies to revolutionize health care.
We have yet to fully embrace what the pioneers of digital media instinctively knew – that the most exciting things happen when you expand your idea of yourself by connecting to a bigger, more inclusive view of the future.
I congratulate all of you for the accomplishments being celebrated tonight. My thanks for everything you’re doing – and everything you will do – to invent the broadband future. And I’m confident that – with the inventiveness and passion of the people in this room – the best is yet to come.
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