Verizon’s Vodafone buyout isn’t about wireless control, it’s about connecting everything

[Commentary] Verizon Communications’ $130 billion buyout of Vodafone’s 45 percent stake in Verizon Wireless means Verizon would no longer to have run its wireline and wireless businesses as separate companies, allowing Verizon to break down the increasingly artificial distinction between a mobile service and a home or business broadband service.

The wireless industry’s future growth is going to come from the Internet of things: tablets, cars, wearables, appliances and ordinary household objects. Some of them will link to home networks, some of them will connect to the mobile network, but many of them will need to link to both. “In an increasingly saturated world, the value of bundling can’t be understated,” said mobile telecom analyst Chetan Sharma. If that artificial barrier between wireline and wireless disappears, Verizon could just sell connectivity — a single plan that links you to multiple networks. A unified Verizon could deeply combine fiber connectivity, cloud computing and mobile networking into the same package it sells a Fortune 500 company. Of course, to build this kind of universal connectivity service, consumers and businesses will have to place a lot more trust (and money) into Verizon’s hands than they’re accustomed to today. They’ll also have to gain the cooperation of numerous device makers and Internet of things players. Verizon may choose to build its own hotspot network like AT&T or it could follow Comcast’s lead and open up its residential Wi-Fi network to all mobile customers.