1:00 PM At CES, I put Verizon's Eric Bruno on the spot to walk me through a day in the 'Borderless Life.' The idea is that all your network services can be available on any connected device
I feel like I've seen this demo in many CES past, from Verizon and others, the only thing that changes is the devices (tablets, phones, TVs) get better. I don't see anything in the experience here that's really new--the magic of remotely dimming lights and adjusting thermostats, which he seemed to really focus on, doesn't differentiate anymore.
The cloud content management is interesting but I find Apple's offering just as compelling and it doesn't tie me to a specific carrier/ISP.
Funny you say that because I had the same feeling. Haven't we seen this movie before? I guess the sign of progress is that service providers now are doing the integration, transcoding and other work to make the vision a reality, although you have to wonder if things will work as well as the demo or if you'll be talking to tech support all night because it doesn't. And being this connected to a single provider's network does have a certain Big Brother creepiness to it.
The Big Brother creepiness is definitely an issue and I covered that in a recent podcast. Very interesting insights from Allison Cerra about the trade off consumers are making for cloud and managed services:
I've seen bits and pieces before but this is one of the first times I've seen all the key services -- email, TV management, home management, calendars, music, video -- being delivered on the go by someone besides Apple on some connection other than Wi-Fi.
I think we consumers tend to tire of these demos because they usually leave out huge gotchas or they include the phrase "someday soon we'll be able to." The reason I liked this particular demo is that I know folks that are using the services now, exactly as shown.
So it's not flashy, but it does work and does give you a reason for hope if you don't want to be locked into a particular device or OS ecosystem.
That's my problem, I'm in No. California and NOT in FiOS territory i.e. I'm in the uVerse. Am a Verizon Wireless customer however.
I brought this up because LR had covered Eric's TelcoTV session where he was asked the question about out-of-region availability and his response was they were evaluating and would advise in the next year. It is now that "next year" and I was hoping he could provide better guidance. More specifically will their borders be extended as a part of the new VzW partnership with Comcast which is my local MSO?
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