Verizon takes on the home network

As the home becomes a local area network supporting everything from video surveillance to energy management and from communications and Internet services to smart appliances and health care applications, telecom network operators such as Verizon Communications are well positioned to step in and manage it all. But do they want to?

The answer is yes, but don’t get any ideas about Verizon breeding a brigade of Super Geeks to run around supporting the effort. For Verizon, the home is the network and network technology is the geek squad. Building the right technology into the customer premises equipment upfront can avoid a lot of problems later on, said Tushar Saxena, director of home networking technologies at Verizon...