With its stodgy V Cast interface and severe “walled garden” practices, Verizon Wireless always seemed to us the menacing giant of the cell phone industry, until this year. This year we saw The Network bend, just a little bit, in some interesting ways. Obviously, the recent announcement that some level of openness, no matter how small or vague, would come to VZW’s networks was a huge part of this change. But, even before, we saw some subtle hints.
I want my mobile TV
Rolling out V Cast Mobile TV was a much bigger deal than Verizon let on, but the launch was surprisingly soft. Perhaps the company didn’t want to heavily promote such a fledgling service, with its spotty reception and mere 8 channels of content. But we think this only added to customer confusion, and Verizon, with any network launching a true mobile TV service in the near future, needs to work hard to differentiate mobile TV from the swill that the networks have been promoting as mobile video.
Real mobile TV looks great and has first-run, full-length programs from major networks. It’s a technology we like seeing when works well, like on the LG Voyager. We’d like to see much more in the way of mobile TV from Verizon Wireless. We’d like more channels, more coverage and more devices. But even better, we’d like more promotion. Maybe even turn off V Cast videos. The pay-as-you-go clips download service is seriously diluting the brand, but even worse, it’s confusing customers and hurting the appeal of mobile television. Try getting someone excited about watching mobile TV on a slick device like the Voyager and their knee-jerk response is “I’ve seen mobile TV, and I don’t really like it.” What they have seen isn’t real mobile broadcasting, so Verizon Wireless needs to show them the difference.
It’s the network, stupid
Of course, beyond the services and devices, we expect that most news from Verizon Wireless will involve the company’s network plans. They will be a major participant in the upcoming auction of the 700MHz spectrum, and we suspect they’ll win a major chunk. This explains the recent overtures of openness by The Network, and even the rumors that Verizon might join Google’s Android project. We doubt that would be necessary, as the company already has manufacturers like LG and Samsung who bend over backwards to make phones exclusively available, but it’s possible.
More interesting, though, is the recent alignment of Verizon’s future wireless networking plans with those of Vodafone. With Vodafone, Verizon owns an equal stake in Verizon Wireless, but because of the disparity between VZW’s CDMA networks and Vodafone’s GSM towers, the two have never really achieved any useful synergy. Now that both will support the same 4G technology, hopefully we’ll see more globe-trotting handsets, and perhaps even better rates and service for international travelers.
Slow and steady wins the race?
So, in the coming year, however the auction and future networking plans turn out, we see more phones from Verizon Wireless that step out of the walled garden, just a bit. We see some slight changes, shortcuts perhaps, to the interface that has vexed us all year, and in years past. We’ll see some cool new hardware designs, like the LG Venus, as well as some welcome imports from the Korean market, courtesy of Samsung and others. Slowly, we’ll see some changes for the better, and for Verizon Wireless, change is good.
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