Verizon at Home

[#1]

Here at CES, it’s a mad house.  I walked the floor Wednesday with thousands of my closest friends, looking for “the next big thing.”

I found something better.

Thousands of gadgets, hundreds of e-tools, and scores and sores of connected devices.  With some pride I noted how much of consumer electronics this year are part of the 4G LTE ecosystem, an ecosystem that wouldn’t exist to this advanced degree without Verizon’s network innovation.

Meters, wireless cameras, handsets, tablets – if you wanted a common theme at this year’s show – “connections” would be what I would say.

But my big find wasn’t that, it was bigger, better.

It was competition.  Phones are computers. Tablets are TVs. Electric meters are phones.  Every one, every innovation competes for the consumer’s attention, to solve a customer’s problem. 

This year I’ve read some reporters were lamenting that big players like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple have either limited, diminishing, or zero presence at CES.  It seems there aren’t enough “big boys” spoon-feeding us “the next big thing.”

How sloppy, untidy, and time consuming is that for today’s tech beat reporter?

Sure, this competitive marketplace isn’t a pretty picture.  It’s more like an elementary school cafeteria food fight.  Lots of noises, new kids chuck stuff, old kids chuck stuff, and everyone wonders what might stick to the wall.

Big and small, old and new;  tech companies are chasing one another -- all fighting for the consumer’s attention.  It’s a mad, mad, mad world. No brown paper packages wrapped up with string.  More like a mosh pit of competitors slamming away at and with each other.

CES is exhibit A. The environment Verizon and the scores of other tech companies who build the devices, apps, networks and tools that define our modern lives is viciously competitive.

It isn’t tidy, it isn’t always pretty, but it is a fact.  And if anyone doesn’t see that, they need to come to Vegas.

[#2]

Isn't the 4G LTE ecosystem part of the wireless system, and NOT the Residential Community. Is the plan to really dump FiOS to the house  expansion and run everything backwards over the air waves? Sad state of affairs IMHO. It may have a place, but I don't like the idea in residential services. Just me.