Can Verizon dominate interactive TV?

Part 1 of 2

Verizon expects interactivity to be a significant part of TV viewing going forward, even this year, and believes its FiOS TV platform is engineered to take advantage of interactive options well ahead of its cable competitors. Using three different types of interactivity, Verizon will begin rolling out new interactive capabilities later this year, said Joe Ambeault, Verizon’s director of product development for consumer TV.

Verizon’s advantage is in the way its FiOS TV platform was designed to enable multiple types of interactivity and engagement and to allow innovation from other content and application providers to be incorporated into its service, Ambeault said. Where Verizon has long offered widgets, which allow its FiOS TV customers to see personalized news, weather, traffic and sports information, the next generation of interactivity could include social networking, one-touch e-commerce and more enhanced TV viewing.

“The difference here is that we had always built our platform from the outset to do this,” Ambeault said in an interview. “It has been a function of taking that architecture that we had put in place and now implementing the design details to bring it to life. A lot of my competitors have to re-architect their environment.”

Verizon is using three different types of interactivity technology, operating virtual machines within its set-top boxes, including one based on the Lua programming language, another on the EBIF (enhanced binary interchange format) standard -- which is a subset of the cable OCAP (Open Cable Application Platform) -- and a third on DVD capabilities.

The Lua-based interactive applications, such as the Widget Bazaar, which enables other content creators to design widgets, include  “more sophisticated interaction models, which are beyond sort of a simple display of information and start to become more participatory and interactive” than existing widgets built on XML and RSS technologies.  

“Last fall, ESPN fantasy football was our first real proof of concept for going beyond XML and RSS – we just didn’t wave the flags big about more comprehensive opportunities,” Ambeault said.
Last week, Verizon demonstrated Twitter- and Facebook-type applications for interactive TV, but those are, again, proofs of concept and not necessarily applications Verizon will deploy, he said.