Verizon CEO Iven Seidenberg, who is on his way out as CEO of Verizon, might want to take back an interview he conducted this week, as it has given him nothing but trouble. Buried somewhere between his comments about wanting the iPhone to come to Verizon and his plans to hunt and throttle video users, Seidenberg made the comment that he thought there wasn't really much of a spectrum crunch after all -- and that he thought the FCC should stay out of managing spectrum. The FCC thinks those comments were rather strange, and in a blog post document countless instances where Verizon has stated the exact opposite:Verizon, as usual, wants to have their cake and eat it too. They essentially spent much of the last two weeks saying they'd like to see all FCC authority gutted and talking about how the government should stay out of their business. Except of course when government can do something for it -- like imposing tougher regulation on competitors (blocking Google's acquisition of AdMob), forcing cable operators to give them access to exclusive local sports programming, expediting tower builds, etc.

Verizon's public comments and their actions have never been in sync, and while it's nice to see the FCC call out Verizon for these inconsistencies -- it would be nicer to see the agency do this across the board. Perhaps the FCC would like to highlight how Verizon pays lip service to rural broadband expansion, yet is busily ignoring or selling off huge swaths of rural America. Meanwhile, if Seidenberg really doesn't want the spectrum the FCC plans to free up -- perhaps some smaller, hungry competitor does?