I’m so over my crush on cable: Verizon CEO

The need to own a cable company is so last year that Verizon Chief Executive Lowell McAdam doesn’t even think about it anymore.

“We’ve movedon,” the head of America’s largest telecom said at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference on Thursday. “Thefacts show you can build it better than buy it.”

McAdam didn’t try to distance himself from last year’s market-moving quote that merging Verizon with a cable giant made a lot of “industrial sense.”

But he did change his mind about pursuing such a deal once the fiber infrastructure necessary for wireless’ fifth-generation (or 5G) gels.

“This is the platform that will usher in the fourth industrial revolution in the country,” McAdamsaid of the next generation of mobile networks — networks he predicts will have a response time five times as fast as a 4G network plus 10 times the battery life and 100 times the throughput.

What’s more, the CEOcontinued, 5G is no longer years away but “on our doorstep.” Cable no longer sits on that doorstep, because it lacks the necessary bandwidth, he said.

McAdam also said he wasn’t impressed by AT&T’s move to use its expected acquisition of HBOparentTime Warner to sell more mobile devices.

Verizon wants consumers to buy Verizon products on their ownmerits, McAdamsaid.