RSSVerizon fails with The Hub
By Tim Conneally | Published September 30, 2009, 2:30 PM
Verizon has reportedly discontinued the Verizon Hub VoIP phone/widget tablet a little more than six months after it debuted.
The short-lived Hub was intended for households with multiple Verizon Wireless phones, where it could act as a calendar, home messaging and management platform and VoIP base station. And though fixed-line telephony continues to dwindle as technologies such as Femtocell gain cachet among wireless carriers, both The Hub and Verizon's femtocell Wireless Network Extender suffered from the same problem: they weren't tied into FiOS.
The Hub was not meant to be paired exclusively with a Verizon FiOS connection, and that could have proven to be its ultimate undoing. It was marketed as a companion to a 2-year Verizon Wireless contract, and allowed the device to be used on an Internet connection from any provider. Nevertheless, it added a $35 monthly charge onto the customer's wireless bill, in addition to the initial $200 investment and $80 per additional VoIP handset charge.
Unlike Verizon's Hub, AT&T's VoIP "kitchenphone" called HomeManager is packaged with AT&T's U-Verse service and is limited to markets supporting that service, therefore, it has managed to last for just over a year with no outward signs of stopping.
Well if FIOS was in MORE areas were people have money like my area this might have done better. I have been wanting FIOS for years and i'm in the high rent district of Alexandria VA (Near the Pentigon) but ONLY Comcast owns the cable in this area. So no FIOS at all. I would have liked this device also.
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|There is absolutely no reason that local city governments can't let Verizon install FiOS wherever they want to. If Verizon wants to install FiOS in a major metropolitan area they should be allowed to, even if it involves tearing up major streets and significantly inconveniencing people. There's absolutely no reason for consumers not to have access to Verizon FiOS or a fiber optic internet service from another company if Verizon is not available in a particular area.
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