Verizon on Unified Communications - It This Possible?

Cnet has an interview with Mark Wegleitner, Verizon’s senior vice president of technology in charge of broadband and consumer services. It’s an in depth interview worth reading, but what I find interesting is his one line answer on Unified Communications.

Verizon’s track record in broadband is not so good although their EVDO service is good (still technically fast dial up).

So when you talk about new voice services, are you talking about offering unified communications in the home?
Wegleitner: Yes, we can offer a unified communication experience in the home today with point solutions. And we have run way left for more sophisticated and converged services.

When will we see these services?
Wegleitner: We can already provide the ability to forward calls. But the find-me and follow-me services haven’t caught on as rapidly as we thought. Sometimes the first time an application comes out of the shoot, it doesn’t catch. But then later, it does. I don’t think we’ve created enough selection or a compelling-enough template to drive mass-market adoption of some of these services yet. But that will come. I don’t think we’re talking more than a couple of years away

Other notable question and answers from Cnet’s Marguerite Reardon

Q: As you know, Comcast got caught slowing down peer-to-peer traffic on its network. As a network provider yourself, do you think it’s necessary to manage your customers’ traffic?
Wegleitner: I think we can come up with scenarios where network management would be necessary. While there might be plenty of bandwidth out there, you can’t really guarantee that you can get an error-free transmission of, say, a video file that will be guaranteed at a specific point in time. That is why you might need rational network management.

But is it acceptable to identify and slow down specific types of traffic like BitTorrent or other peer-to-peer applications?
Wegleitner: Well, it’s sort of a glass-half-full situation. Degrading traffic for one application enables another to work better. But we have to allow people who use the peer-to-peer applications for lawful and legitimate purposes to do so.

Verizon is working with several peer-to-peer companies to find ways to use the technology to distribute content more efficiently. How can the P2P protocol benefit service providers like Verizon?
Wegleitner: Peer-to-peer is a distribution enabler. But often when people talk about P2P, it gets lumped into a category with things that are bad, mainly because it takes up so much capacity on the network. But whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing, there is underlying technology for P2P that can be used to everyone’s advantage to get content like video, which everyone is asking for, distributed in the most efficient way.

Update: Karl at DSLReports has a post covering this -always good opinion from Karl’s comment section.