The new GM has picked former SBC and AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre to be their new chairman. I think this is an awesome choice, an inspired choice, and I'm not kidding in the least. I've been a Toyota man for 20 years, but I'm gonna check out Whitacre's GM the next time I need a car.Not everyone in the Internet world was too enamored of Ed Whitacre, but all he did was take Southwestern Bell from being the smallest RBOC at Divestiture and turn it into the owner of the biggest telephone company in America and controller of half the current duopoly.
Those local lines that the FCC wanted to open up for competition, those were his lines, by God, and no FCC was going to tell him who he had to let use them at what price.
But you could tell just by watching him that if Ed Whitacre had been CEO of Jack in the Box instead of Southwest Bell, there'd be a lot fewer McDonalds' today and a lot more people rolling down the windows of their cars to ask some freaky-looking clown statue for a burger.
Sure, Whitacre never got the Internet the way that, oh, I don't know, AOL did. All SBC and AT&T did was make money carrying that Internet traffic over their lines.
At Southwest Bell and then SBC and then AT&T, Whitacre knew what assets he had and how to leverage them. Maybe GM's beyond saving, but if it isn't, I wouldn't bet against Whitacre to be the guy to save it.
