Share Your Ideas with Verizon

[#1]

Maximize your WAN investment, and reduce the use of expensive upstream bandwidth.

Verizon needs to offer a WAN-level content server that has an exhaustive library of video and audio material. It can do this by itself, or it can offer collocation deals on its WANs to Hulu, Netflix, and others, provided they offer ideal product to its customers (free or close to it).

WAN bandwidth is relatively infinite. Upstream bandwidth is expensive and limited (even though Verizon is Tier 1). Save money and make customers smile by maximizing use of the WAN.

This will also strengthen communities, especially if you offer a audio/video content server that reputable organizations and individuals can upload free content onto, sort of like a modernized public access cable concept. I could see schools, churches, and similar organizations making use of it.

Verizon needs to forget about TV (it's primitive and dead), cell phones (why lower yourself to selling phones?), and other silly issues, and focus on its core business: networking. As your Verizon Wireless slogan goes: "It's the network." TV is dead. Long live the data network!

Game servers would be nice, too.

[#2]

Verizon, think about it: YOU HAVE A GPON NETWORK!!!!

You will not be able to maximize that at the upstream level for several years, but at the municipal area network (MAN) level you'd be almost worshipped. Give us some rockin' content locally.

For example, http://surround.verizon.net/ runs very nicely. I'm assuming that this service has local servers, due to the apparent low latency and excellent throughput. If this site had more content ( ietar Trek), it'd actually be useful.

If you just want to try it out without licensing issues, host Big Buck Bunny (http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/) or another free-to-distribute video.

If you are worried about fighting tooth and nail with the studios for licensing issues, tell them that many of your customers are practically gods on Bittorrent. If they offered a reasonable licensing deal ($10/mo.) for blanket rights to view all content (with no silly/insulting/irritating/evil DRM), that activity would significantly decrease. They can whine all they want, but this is their chance to offer a reasonable option.

Hard drive space is cheap but bandwidth is not. This is where you have the corner on the market, since you have access to nearly unlimited bandwidth at the local level, and plenty of fiber nationally to keep your servers synced up.

[#3]

Oh, and how about expanding this into a giant database / archive of every commercial video worth watching, from public-domain stuff (eg archive.org) to just-released movies.

The government might complain, however, as the GPD dips due to all of the workers staying home to watch long-lost episodes of their favorite shows, one after another, for days on end.

[#4]

We already offer these solutions... our Partner Port service lets other folks put their servers right on our WAN and only a few hops from you. Verizon Business has a growing suite of services for media / entertainment