Viva Verizon

One of the most impressive bigger than life presences at the Consumer Electronics Show this year was Verizon. It started in the press rooms and blogger lounges, continued with free delicious lunches every day, extended to a meaningful keynote speech by Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg, and was further demonstrated in a behemoth booth in the South Hall of the Convention Center.

To get to the press room, you had to run a gauntlet of Verizon staff who were eager to tell you all about and demonstrate Verizon innovations. I was glad that I took the time to get acquainted with some of Verizon’s new technology, and I want to share it with you too.

Of course I was already keenly aware of and am eagerly awaiting the dissemination of Verizon’s new 4G network. Of course I will have to acquire a new Android 4G phone to take advantage of it, which is a downer for people who have recently acquired a new 3G phone—no firmware upgrades will be possible. L.

Seidenberg emphasized in his address the importance of faster and more commodious broadband as the key to connectivity and technological expansion. Hence the deployment of a 4G LTE based cellular network that will be 10 times faster than the current 3G standard.

In fact, Verizon’s 4G LTE network will be the fastest in America with speeds of 5-12 mbps. You can download a song in 4 seconds, 20 photos in a minute, a 10 MB presentation in 10 seconds, a TV show in 5 minutes, or an entire movie in about 20 minutes.

Another exciting development from Verizon I was glad to learn about is the new FiOS network with Flex View. Unfortunately, FiOS will only be available in select markets at first, but will eventually cover the entire country. It will offer an alternative method of acquiring television entertainment and give cable and satellite networks some much needed competition. Hopefully the consumer will benefit from lower pricing spawned by competition.

The FiOS network features Flex View, and that’s the exciting part. With Flex View, subscribers will be able to stream live or recorded content to mobile phones, laptops, and desktops. Signals may be shared among up to 5 devices simultaneously. It means you can enjoy the same entertainment in your living room or on the road. It means you can control your DVR remotely to view, record, or watch whatever you wish, whenever you wish, from wherever you wish.

Subscribers will have 70 GB of storage with each account. You can use this space for all your content including your own pictures and videos for viewing wherever and whenever you wish with Flex View.

Home Control is another feature bundled with FiOS. It allows you to monitor your home security system remotely with cameras, burglar and fire alarm systems, door locks, energy management, door locks, lights, thermostat, and more.

Also available is Umi by Cisco in conjunction with FiOS. Umi allows for teleconferencing and is designed to get families together as if they were all in the same living room at the same time over live video on your HDTV. Vidoes can be recorded and shared on YouTube, Facebook or email.

FiOS will have an On Demand feature as well. On Demand allows you to view first run movies on a pay per view basis. You can also watch a host of free movies and content on major networks and cable networks such as HBO, Showtime, and Starz. The glory is that the programs are already recorded so that you don’t even have to worry about programming them on your DVR.

Thank you Verizon for your pioneering, innovative efforts and results. I just hope you hurry to my neighborhood. I am looking forward to being an early subscriber to FiOS and taking advantage of 4G, Home Control, Flex View, and Umi. Thank you Verizon for all the delicious free lunches at CES and a comfortable place to sit to get a little work done with a WiFi connection.

I suppose another big news item than cannot be ignored is that iPhone will now be available on Verizon. Too bad iPhones can’t handle 4G, which as far as I’m concerned is just another reason to get an Android phone. It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out with iPhone on Verizon. I know a lot of iPhone developers who are eager for the new customers it will represent.

At CES, Verizon unveiled 10, count them, TEN, new 4G Android phones such as the LG Revolution, HTC Thunderbolt, Motorola Droid Bionic and a Samsung Smartphone. In addition, there will be several new Android tablets such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab and Motorola Xoom. HP will offer Pavillion and Compaq notebooks for 4G consumption.

In my estimation, Verizon characterizes the most important theme of CES, which was innovation with convergence through cooperative efforts with other entities to bring beneficial results in advancing technology to improve our lives.