Service & Tech Support
Service and tech support are major issues that will emerge in the connected home as well. Service issues are a “train wreck” waiting to happen, according to Whitton of Verizon. “If a consumer calls Verizon because they lost content on their PC, how are you going to answer? FiOS systems come with dedicated routers so that FiOS doesn’t get the service calls when consumers have issues with store-bought routers. “You’d be surprised at the number of calls that come in from people who forgot their WEP key,” says Whitton. The Verizon router includes remote management so that the company can remotely manage FiOS system performance 24/7.

Who will support product in a DLNA world? Bullwinkle suggested a third-party Geek Squad-like support company. A former TiVo executive, Bullwinkle says, “I can’t tell you how many stories we had when the cable guy would come out and ‘fix’ the cable by unhooking TiVo.” To make the whole home work, he says, is a difficult thing. “None of us can be an expert on all the technologies in the home.”

Hawkey of EchoStar notes that the video service provider side and the computing side are poised to clash in the DLNA world. “When I get the two to connect and talk through DLNA and then Microsoft pushes an update, and all of a sudden I’ve lost all my videos because I can’t talk to the DVR in the PC from the Verizon FiOS system, that’s the scariest part for us. Do I call Best Buy or Verizon? When I say, ‘I lost the content on my PC that I was watching on the FiOS system,’ how do you answer that? Today you don’t.”

Wireless TV
All of the panelists agreed that wireless TV is far out on the horizon. “Some homes are constructed in ways that simply don’t work,” says Whitton of Verizon, citing structures such as stone homes or high-rise condominiums that aren’t conducive to wireless transmissions.

“Wireless is a wonderful technology for portability,” Whitton says, adding that most people aren’t aware that wireless in a home performs poorly because of the fading issue. “What that translates to is if you’re watching a football game in the last 30 seconds and Junior walks across and creates a fade in that wireless signal so that the signal fades out, you’re probably going to be a disgruntled customer. Customers want to be able to count on service behaving consistently 100-percent of the time. Having it work 70-80 percent of the time isn’t going to be an acceptable business model.”

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