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SBC’s Chair discusses intent to offer integrated cable, cellular, wireline service

The Wall Street Journal has a very interesting piece with an interview with SBC’s Chairman and CEO, Edward Whitacre. I’ve posted the entire article here for those without subscriptions.

This piece is important for several reasons. First, SBC is 60% owner of Cingular (which is now the merged entity including AT&T Wireless), so this shows that SBC is planning on creating synergy between their wireline and wireless offerings as a strategic necessity. Secondly, he offers valuable insights into the competitive dynamics of the industry.

Even more subtly, I was struck by Whitacre’s assessment of personal technology:

I’m not a real techie. I have a computer at home, but don’t mess with it that often. I mean, what am I going to do with 200 e-mails a day? No, I’m really not very techie, but I can use a computer.

Believe it or not, I can even burn a CD, or I can buy a CD, take it home, and put it in my PC and then load it on my iPod. I looked last night, there’s something like 514 hours of music on it. I have Ray Charles on there, I have Steely Dan, I have the music from “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.”

This is an additional datapoint which is fueling a new theme I’m starting to track - consumer-driven adoption (I’m writing a longer piece with an overview of the themes I’m tracking - see .