Phone Home

Did you know that printing the New York Times costs twice as much as sending every subscriber a free Amazon Kindle e-reader?

That may be the case, but I don’t see that venerable institution going virtual anytime soon. The print publishing business, and especially newspapers, is struggling and has been for a few years now, but the basic model will be hard to let go of because of the tradition and the fact that there are enough subscribers who quite simply like the feel of paper in their hands. Think about it. Coffee and newspapers? Comforting. Coffee and Kindle? A bit Blade Runner-ish, to be honest.

In a similar vein, I wonder if the world’s ready for a radical reinvention of the home phone. Dialtone, whether delivered over IP or POTS, is what it is — familiar, not complicated, hopefully always on. Now, enter the Verizon Hub, with its 7-inch screen and Swiss Army knife-like nature — VoIP! Family bulletin board! Digital picture frame! It cleverly leverages the Verizon FiOS rollout to provide the proverbial value-adds, but will it play in Peoria?

It notably doesn’t provide Web browsing, though it has an array of content widgets consumers can choose from for weather, sports, Yellow Pages and so on. If you’re a Verizon Wireless subscriber, the Hub has cool apps like Chaperone, for tracking the location of your kids’ Verizon cell phones. It can also send calendar updates from the family bulletin board to your mobile phone.

Let us not forget that AT&T launched its own version of such a gadget last fall, complete with a 7-inch screen, called the Home Manager. Again: VoIP calling. Again: Cordless handset. Again: Internet content. Even the digital picture frame ability. And it wraps in mobile apps like address books and visual voice mail.

Here’s my question: The digital home concept and the integration of wired and wireline is nothing new — just ask any set-top-box maker. But now that we actually do have fiber to the home and the ability to supercharge the proposition with content, will these plays strike a chord (or should that be cord)? Or are they still ahead of their time? These devices aren’t cheap, either – $200 and $300, respectively, plus a service plan, on top of the broadband line.

Verizon and AT&T certainly need to monetize their expensive fiber rollouts ($23 billion for Verizon) and strategies like what’s behind the Hub would seem to go in that direction. It makes the triple play more attractive and stickier, and it leverages the wireless arm of the business. Wireline subs are down, it’s no secret, so in a way this kind of thing also allows a firewall against mobile-only operators with their femtocells and attractive wireline substitution pitches.

Whether it’s a solid strategy for the times, however, remains to be seen. Are people ready for a new version of the home phone? Or will it seem alien? Home phone, or phone home?

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