~First off, before we even start the call, we’ve got problems, because shithead won’t get on the phone unless I’m on the line first. Like, Ja’Red comes in and says we’re ready to go, and I go, You mean Randall is on the line, and Ja’Red says, No, his assistant is on the line and once you get on then they’re going to get Randall — so I reach down, hit the button then hit it again so the call gets terminated. I tell Ja’Red to explain to these motherfuckers that Steve Jobs does not get on the line first, ever. Ja’Red does this, but Randall’s assistant insists Randall always gets on last, and especially so in this case since AT&T is about three times the size of Apple, so this time I pick up the phone and tell the assistant that he should inform Randall that when he’s ready to get his pointy head out of his ass and call me, I’ll be here waiting for his call.
[…]
While I’m ranting, let me ask you something, Randall. At the risk of sounding like Glenn Beck Jr. — what the fuck has gone wrong with our country? Used to be, we were innovators. We were leaders. We were builders. We were engineers. We were the best and brightest. We were the kind of guys who, if they were running the biggest mobile network in the U.S., would say it’s not enough to be the biggest, we also want to be the best, and once they got to be the best, they’d say, How can we get even better? What can we do to be the best in the whole fucking world? What can we do that would blow people’s fucking minds? They wouldn’t have sat around wondering about ways to fuck over people who loved their product. But then something happened. Guys like you took over the phone company and all you cared about was milking profit and paying off assholes in Congress to fuck over anyone who came along with a better idea, because even though it might be great for consumers it would mean you and your lazy pals would have to get off your asses and start working again in order to keep up.
[…]
I stopped, then. There was nothing on the line. Silence. I said, Randall? He goes, Yeah, I’m here. I said, Does any of that make sense? He says, Yeah, but we’re still not going to do it. See, when you run the numbers what you find is that we’re actually better off running a shitty network than making the investment to build a good one. It’s just numbers, Steve. You can’t charge enough to get a return on the investment.
Now there was silence again. This time I was the one not talking. There was this weird lump in my throat, this tightness in my chest. I had this vision of the future — a ruined empire, run by number crunchers, squalid and stupid and puffed up with phony patriotism, settling for a long slow decline.
“Okay,” I said. “Nice talking to you.” Then I hung up.
The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: A not-so-brief chat with Randall Stephenson of AT&T
This is the best thing I’ve read in forever. And he’s exactly right. Read the whole thing.
