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Shaygan Kheradpir
Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer
Verizon Communications
Tectonic shifts in consumer expectations, behaviors and technologies are enabling a deep transformation of our society, according to Shaygan Kheradpir, Executive Vice President & CIO, Verizon Communications.
The acceleration of technology innovation, including processor speed, memory capacity, screen resolution, network bandwidth and many other elements is well documented, and technology is improving at an exponential rate, said Kheradpir.
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Less obvious, but more profound, is the fact that consumer expectations are changing in a major, disruptive way, and will be very different in the coming decades than in the past. “Faster, bigger, cheaper” is no longer beautiful, it is no longer what consumers are really looking for, according to Kheradpir. What they are looking for is relevant content and services, pulled by them and made available at the right time and in the right context; they want a tailored experience based on their taste and habits; they want control over content and access, in a continuous and autonomous way. And service providers who offer this experience will see customer loyalty markedly improve.
Kheradpir continued to say that consumers don’t just want to be passive users of digital content, but want to collaborate with service providers in a significant way. “This is the era of the engaged consumer”, said Kheradpir, “the more you give to consumers, the more they use and the more they demand.” As illustrating examples, Kheradpir mentioned network bandwidth, connectivity and interactivity:” IP traffic is growing at 80% every year and Internet video is growing at 100%; mobile Internet data is growing at 131%; social networks are growing at three times the rate of Internet growth; 1.1B YouTube videos are uploaded every day” said Kheradpir.
To respond adequately to these new customer expectations, companies are rethinking the way they develop new products: a revolution in the culture of innovation is taking place. According to Kheradpir, the most successful innovations today are generated at the boundaries of disciplines and industries. For example, consumers are interested in cameras that can upload photos to Facebook instantly, no longer about the highest resolution. In less than three weeks, Verizon developed and launched an interactive scoreboard for the American football channel, RedZone. Twitter then got interested in the idea and suggested adding tweets during the football game. This is collaborative innovation, which happens at the boundaries of disciplines, sectors, and industries, said Kheradpir.
Another deep change in the industry is the emergence of a new technology delivery platform, formed by a combination of screens (TV, mobile handsets, etc.) and Hi-IQ Networks, including fiber optic networks; 4th generation wireless; and cloud computing machines. This new platform is a radical departure from the old model and implies a revolution of the essential building blocks, i.e. network (e.g. homes connected at speeds of businesses - 100 million bits per second), customer interfaces (e.g. the emergence of new screens and screen convergence) and supporting technologies (cloud computing).
Verizon is making a huge number of investments in each of these major areas. For example, the company will be deploying Long Term Evolution (LTE) in a matter of 2-3 years; and FiOS, i.e. passive optical fiber from the home to the local central office and the network. “Once you have FiOS in your home, all your devices are always connected without you doing anything, and there is no IT requirement or support needed,” Kheradpir said. “The network interacts seamlessly with all connected devices in the digital home.”