News Detail
More from Verizon and the iPad(Jan 11 11)
Verizon continues to make headlines. Today, they announced the iPhone4, but the company will not stop there.
Verizon has a history of pushing the envelope on a very large scale, and they have made major investments over the last couple of years to accommodate the massive traffic generated by all of us and our connected devices. This is why the company is working on streaming their FiOS TV content to your iPad so you can take it wherever you go.
Verizon has had success with their FiOS service. They have about 18 million homes with FiOS, and if you’re interested the company will give you up to 150Mbps (download speed) for home broadband.
The company’s next step seems to be targeted at their FiOS TV content to make it more convenient for all of us tablet owners. Verizon is planning to expand their FiOS TV content beyond its current GPON (Gigabit Passive Optical Network) and its next-gen XG-PON2 fiber network by developing an app service.
The way Verizon would do this is by making FiOS TV independent of fiber for the iPad. In other words, the Verizon app service will allow FiOS TV subscribers to stream FiOS TV content to their iPads or other mobile devices, and also download that content to their tablets so that it can be consumed wherever they go. This would be very convenient for anyone since it will allow subscribers to take TV content with them to their next vacation if they want to.
The key will be on how Verizon preserves the DRM (Digital Rights Management) for all that content. But, it seems that by offering FiOS TV as an application that can be downloaded to your iPad, you will be able to link to your FiOS TV subscription service to view your paid content.
According to Verizon’s director of consumer product development, Joe Ambeault, the company plans to add cross-platform support to the FiOS service by supporting many other devices.
Verizon currently offers their Flex View service, which allows subscribers to buy or rent content to watch on any supported device. However, the new FiOS app service would go beyond what Flex View offers. It will allow you to watch paid content anywhere you go.
