Quote of the Week

I know it is a bit early in the week to be handing out awards, but the quote from Charles Dunstone, the CEO of Carphone Warehouse (CPW) in today’s Financial Times in such a classic and shows such bravado that I had to read it twice to confirm what he had just said.

The article is all about BSkyB’s launch of its’ broadband service tomorrow and Charles Dunstone being worried about the threat from BSkyB.

“My next worry is that in four years time when there is no natural growth left in the market through penetration, how do you … stop yourself of getting into a round of trying to steal each other’s customers”

The guy is really cruising for a bruising: he is worried about the situation which he has actively encouraged to create in the cellular world and is causing so much pain to the mobile operators spreading to the Broadband world. Also, he doesn’t recognise three of his biggest customers, Orange, o2 and ntl/virgin as big competitors, and prefers to state he is more frightened of BSkyB – realistic, but not very good for customer relations.

The funny thing is that the two companies who are currently uncompetitive on subsidies to CPW and therefore don’t get a presence in the CPW sales channel, 3 and T-Mobile, are the one’s who don’t compete in the broadband world. Orange, o2 and ntl/virgin that compete with CPW in the broadband world are actually currently providing the biggest subsidies. One look at the CPW websites show the relative level of subsidies. CPW relies on mobile subsidies to fund its’ foray into broadband.

Now, who is the most stupid?