What the Verizon Hub should be

Whenever I look at new offerings from telcos that have a digital home/consumer electronics angle to them, I ask myself, “Is this something that a CE vendor could do better?” Case in point: Verizon's Hub.

Now I've always been a strong proponent of the concept of a “family” information appliance — something that can sit in the kitchen or family room or, ideally, in multiple places in the house, showing synchronized information. Just providing a synchronized, multiuser family calendar alone would be a major killer application for any busy family.

We've seen lots of efforts along these lines over the past five years or so, but none has really been successful.

The Hub marries a broadband-connected touch-screen information appliance with a voice-over-IP (VoIP) phone/service. It improves the breed in several ways previous devices haven't — particularly in terms of usability (the touch screen pays big dividends here) and form factor (it's an attractive device that would look good in any kitchen).

But it still doesn't quite hit the mark, from my perspective.

Let's look at what's missing. First: e-mail. Yes, it supports short/multimedia message service (and yes, we know how much money Verizon makes on those services, but at least parents will be able to reach teenagers), but no e-mail? It also lacks a true Web browser, which is a lesser omission but unfortunate.

Also missing is an app store. The hub comes with some cool widgets, but a device such as this is literally screaming for greater application diversity. Supposedly one is in the works, but I fear that it will be an also-ran, unless it uses some sort of standardized or portable widget architecture — Verizon needs to take the lead here. Hub sales volumes won't draw developers already torn between iPhone, Palm Pre, Blackberry, etc. Furthermore, I have a hard time imagining a telco giving up enough control to let its own app store grow to 35,000 titles like Apple has (I'd expect 1/100^th of that).

In the sins of commission department, I wonder whether it was really necessary to bundle the VoIP phone (and mandatory $35-a-month VoIP service). It kills the economics of the device. And keep in mind the example of the iPod Touch, which costs more than an iPhone up front but handily outsells it. Not everyone wants (or can have) their voice bundled into a computing platform. Didn't Verizon learn anything from the AT&T EO back in the '90s?

To me this is old school telco think, not nimble CE competitor think. But what else does a telco really bring to the table in a device like this, especially if it's BYOB (bring your own broadband)? A CE vendor could bring a device to market with a lot of the same features but without the added expense of the phone and the gaps filled without a whole lot of effort.

Here's what I'd like to see: a not-too-big, not-too-small touch-screen device (it doesn't have to be laptop-sized, just big enough to be useful — say 7" or 8"), with the ability to synchronize calendars, contacts and the like for multiple users in a family and among devices in the home (other touch screens, PCs, phones, etc.), and the ability to access those downloaded-a-billion-times applications in the app store.

Add in the ability to view and control downloaded and streamed content (in other words, control an Apple TV or other device as well as display the content directly on the touch screen). Leave out the phone and monthly service charges and you've got a market-maker on your hands.

Danny Briere is founder and CEO of TeleChoice, a telecom industry consultancy.