We’re back to it, my dear reader. And just in time too. We’ve stepped back in time, to early October, 2000, right after Lucent Technologies and Bell Labs finish with a meeting with their, soon to become nemesis, Padraic McFreen.
Lucent Technologies and Bell Labs are briefing the then CEO of SBC Communications, Edward Whitacre, on MiVu, but we can only hear CEO, Whitacre’s, side of the phone call.
This author wants to hear what’s being said. Let’s listen in, shall we?
“The best-laid plans…”
“Who’s bright idea was this MiVu Internet Network anyway?” “Who’s Ppadrk McFree?” “Bring’m to my office, and tell him he’s fired.” “He works for me, doesn’t he?” “No?” “He’s a startup network?” “Why…we’ll crush him here locally.” “A national network covering the entire U.S.?” “Yes, I know we’re just local service only.” “Who is this guy?” “Who’s backing him?”
“And he doesn’t want to compete against me?” “He wants to work together…to connect to our network?” “What’s an Internet access network?” “Oh, he invented it.” “He calls it a what?” What’s a ‘Multiservice Internet Virtual Universe?” “Oh, MiVu?” “MiVu.” “What’s a MiVu, for short?” “Oh, a ‘Multiservice Internet Virtual Universe.’”
“Can this MiVu hurt our business?” “We’re rolling out DSL as fast as we can, and you boys got the lion share of the budget.” “Now, you’re telling me in confidence that you have a new customer that can ‘put me out of business?’” “No!” “I can’t partner with him!” “What would our investors think?”
“I can see The Journal’s headline, ‘SBC Communications Thwarts Black Network Startup with Partnership Agreement.’” “Yes, you know those boys as well as I do.” “And Texans will never accept this new idea.” “No, not the network, the partnership.”
“The CEO of SBC Communications partnered with a Black CEO of a Black Network startup?” “Never!”
“The way I see things boys, he’s invented his new network and it’s going to be national, he’s partnered up with you two and ya’ll have point on implementation.” “Don’t build it.” “Right, don’t build his MiVu.” “Build our’s.” “Yes, our’s.” “Well, we do now!”
“You can figure it out.” “If he invented the thing by himself, you Lucent and you Bell Labs, together, should be able to reverse engineer his work.” “No, ya’ll can’t build anything for him.” “Don’t sell him anything.” “Don’t help him in any way.”
“Contracts.” “Non-disclosure agreements.” “MiVu trade secrets.” “All that?” “Already?” “Man, he’s fast!” “And ‘smart’ too, you say?” “Naw…a lot smarter than…but you boys got an excuse, because y’all don’t have an Internet division yet.” “Stay close to him t’il we don’t need him.” “And get Apple on the project.” “They’ll keep it quiet, because they need this more than we do — and they’re techy.”
“Well boys, this has been a very profitable call.” “Internet Network.” “I like it.” “We’re doing it.”
“SBC Communications is getting into the Internet Network business.” “My budget and network team armed, with what you two know about MiVu, we can build our own Internet access network.”
“a 100+ year old telephone company uses its power, position and influence to delete a revolutionary technologist and his startup, then, re-installs itself as the new information and entertainment Internet network company — clone of MiVu, but masked as SBC Communications.”
“Wait, why build an access network to our own network, when it’s my network.” “Yeah, right.” “The entire SBC Communications network can be this Multiservice Internet Virtual Universe.” “Well of course he will know eventually.” “We’ll pay’m off, and he’ll go away.” “We’ll have his Universe.”
“I’m still your biggest customer, right?” “Okay then, we’re doing this MiVu Internet Network Multiservice Internet Virtual Universe thing, and we’ll call ours ‘U-verse’, so nobody can recognize it is MiVu.” “Oh, I see now.” “No, I don’t.” “What’s wrong with our network?” “It’s what?” “Obsolete!” “Hmmm…well how long have you known this little known fact?”
“So the MiVu Internet Network is 100% on the Internet?” “That’s why it’s an Internet network.”
“You have his designs, right?” “Well, follow his designs.” “You didn’t get everything and he has the methods, algorithms, chip specifications, everything?” “Get his prototypes or get him to build them for you.” “Pay for them if you have to — just get them.”
“No, this isn’t wrong, this is business.” “This is business ‘Texas Style.’” “If you can’t ride the bull, don’t come to the rodeo.” “We can’t tell Padraic McFreen.” “We can’t buy him out either.” “This is one chapter for the history books, so let’s write it without Mr. MiVu.”
We weren’t there when these three circled the wagons around Black technology, while boxing out the Genius Black Technologist, but on May 17, 2007, approximately six short years later, CEO, Whitacre declares of the “empire” he had built over those same six short years, “we want to be the only company for your entertainment and communications needs.”
And just like that, MiVu became “Big Tech’s Best Kept Secret”, while SBC and all that followed, unwittingly adopted and used MiVu’s “Black tech startup origin identifier” to promote the MiVu Network, Phase One, as SBC, The Premier Communications and Entertainment Services Provider.
My dear reader, this author needs a Starbucks.