It seems like only last April that Verizon was calling 3DTV sports broadcasts “hype” (because it was, and they were). That’s a fairly far cry from their sudden devotion to 3DTV this week, as the company works with Cisco to highlight the work they’re doing to broadcast the first NFL Game in 3D from New Jersey. Verizon’s 3DTV effort isn’t fully out of the oven, but the company is already talking about a future that involves holograms delivered over FiOS. From an enthusiastic CNET piece:Verizon Communications Chief Information Officer Shaygan Kheradpir said his company is already working with researchers to bring holographic technologies into homes and small businesses. And the medical industry is one place where he sees a particularly good fit for holograms. Kheradpir wouldn’t offer specifics of what Verizon is working on with its research partners, but he said that it has been playing around with sending holographic images of someone’s head across its Fios fiber-optic network.Oddly, CNET gushes over Verizon’s Jetson-esque future vision without mentioning that Verizon has halted all next-gen network upgrades, with no plan to resume them anytime soon. You do wonder: if 3DTV winds up being just hype, wouldn’t this time, money and effort be better used upgrading Verizon’s remaining customers, millions of which remain on 3-7Mbps DSL? If not network upgrades, how about finally fixing a backoffice billing system that for years has had a bad habit of hallucinating phantom charges? No? Sorry to bring it up.
read comment(s)