Making a Pair of Ray-Bans Act Like a HoloLens x50 with Edge Computing, with Verizon’s TJ Vitolo

XR for Business

English - February 11, 2020 10:00 - 40 minutes - 36.7 MB - ★★★★★ - 12 ratings
Technology Business Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed

Previous Episode: The Future of Retail is Virtual, with Macy’s Mohamed Rajani

Next Episode: Finding the Tangible Value of XR in Business, with Nestlé’s Richard Hess

Verizon’s XR development lead, TJ Vitolo, dreams of a day where he can download an entire TV series in an instant, or visualize info about the entire world with AR glasses, even living in a connectivity dead zone by the beach. In his position, he’s able to work to make that dream a forthcoming reality by developing the technology that will make 5G possible.

Alan: Welcome to the XR for
Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today, I’ve got an
amazing guest, TJ Vitolo. He is the director and head of XR
Technology Development at Verizon. Today, he leads the commercial
strategy and product execution behind Verizon’s VR, AR and 360
organization environment. Recently, TJ and his team launched AR
Designer, the world’s first streaming-based AR tool kit that allows
brands and developers to quickly and easily create augmented reality
experiences, with no technical expertise. You can visit Verizon.com
or envrmnt.com. I want to
welcome TJ to the show. Welcome.

TJ: Hey, thanks for having me,
Alan.

Alan: Oh, it’s my absolute
pleasure. I’m so excited to have you on the show. This is like– all
the things you guys are doing, from working with the accessibility
team at Cornell Tech, to your acquisition of Riot, to working with
the Sacramento Kings, Yahoo! News. There is so much going on at
Verizon. You want to just give us a high level summary of what you
do, and what the plan is at Verizon for introducing 5G and XR?

TJ: It’s quite dynamic here. You
know, the VR space is ever evolving. Teams that do a number of things
within VR here. But specifically you mentioned Riot. Between our team
and Riot, we manage both of the content and creative end of XR, and
that’s Riot. And our team manages the technical– technology side of
virtual reality. So really, my team is focused on building tools and
enablers, systems, platforms on the 5G network, sort of the
underlying side of XR, to help accelerate and grow the adoption of
the technology. On the other side, Riot’s all about the product and
the creative storytelling around VR, which really brings these things
to life for people.

Alan: So you’ve got both the
technical side and then the creative. And this is something that I’ve
been harping on with customers as well, and just the industry at
large: that this industry is no longer about just making products.
And you look at the VC investments and they’re investing in platforms
and products, but you still need people to create the content. And I
think you guys have found that balance with Riot. What do you see as
kind of the future of how we create this content, is it going to be
user generated versus studio content, or a mixture of both?

TJ: It’s going to be a mixture
of both. User generation is quite difficult today. One of the
products you mentioned, we launched was AR Designer. And really the
foundation for that was to put the power of augmented reality and
virtual reality into the hands of even the most common user of
technology. We built this platform initially with the mindset that
schoolteachers– and not by any means that they’re simpletons, but
the fact of the matter is they’re teaching students, young children,
and they’ve got to have a very effective way to do that, efficient
way to do that. And so when we were building this tool, we baseline
on children as the audience, schoolteachers as the user of the tool,
to produce something that’s really effective. So I think you’re going
to see as VR/AR becomes more ubiquitous, access is going to be much
greater, and more in the hands of users. At the end of the day,
there’s always go

TJ: Hey, thanks for having me,
Alan.

So walk me through your platform that
you guys have built. Was it in the market already or– walk us
through that.

It was in the market. So we pulled back
on that platform specifically because we had changed the strategy of
our team. Initially, I was brought into the organization around
commercialization for Envrmnt — which is Verizon’s XR organization
— and we wanted to generate revenue off of the XR ecosystem. And
there’s a fair amount of money out there to be made. But at the end
of the day is when we started to launch our commercial products, we
started to build up and prepare for our 5G launch strategy. And the
task of my engineering team was to go down a few different levels in
the technology stack, and start building platform enablers into the
5G network that will drive the adoption acceleration growth of AR/VR.
So the tool we still actually use today, we’ve got over 10,000 users
internally in Verizon that use it across our training organizations,
our HRO organizations, our network operations organizations. So it’s
been very successful. There is still a plan to commercialize that in
the future, but the idea was that we wanted to pin it against our 5G
launch, to show what 5G can do for the XR space. That’s where I’m
super excited, it’s about what 5G specifically does for XR technology
moving forward.

Alan: Absolutely, one of the
videos that I watched of you was a retail demo, where you took a
phone — just a regular phone with 5G — and you pointed at some
products on the shelf, and it not only recognized one product and
gave you like that standard AR image recognition and showed some
overlay information, but it recognized all the products at once. And
I thought that was really a great way of showing how 5G will enable
so much more than just simple AR that we’re used to now using our
phones. And then as that moves to glasses, you’ll be able to walk
down and say, “I’m on a keto diet.” and walk down the
aisles and anything that’s keto will show up in green. I think that’s
where it’s going. And that demo was really incredible.

TJ: Thank you. Yeah, I think AR,
from a mobile standpoint, has been put in this bubble, because of 4G.
And that’s one of the examples of what 5G is going to do to AR. It’s
going to make it highly functional, highly useful, and a lot more
entertaining in that space. Computer vision, graphics rendering.
Those are the two sort of fundamental underlying technologies between
virtual reality and augmented reality. And what we did there is that
we expanded the capability of computer vision by offloading what
typically is done on a mobile device over the 5G network — so
extreme amount of bandwidth, extremely low latency — to a network
node that sits within our network, that is very high powered from a
processing standpoint. It allows us to offload all of that computer
vision information and provide a response back in real time. This is
something only possible over 5G and only possible with our net edge
network. Fundamentally, what this does is, it ends the current
limitations of augmented reality, blows them out of the water, in
terms of their limitations.

Alan: You know, you’re taking
all the compute power off the device, and putting it into the edge.
You’ve been recognized at the Edge Awards already, winning Best
Contribution to Edge Computing for R&D and then Greatest
Commercial Potential for Edge Concept. So you guys are clearly
leading the way for this. One of the things I saw last week in Wired
was startups building a new chip. It’s an artificial intelligence
chip, and it’s the size of an iPad. Rather than everybody’s trying to
make them smaller and smaller, these guys went the opposite way and
made a huge chip, and it can do trillions and trillions of
calculations. But obviously you can’t put a chip the size of an iPad
in your phone. But having the ability to offload that to the cloud
and have the processing power when you need it, where you need it,
but only offloaded into the cloud was really incredibly powerful for
not only rendering, but also capturing the data that’s around you. A
lot of people don’t realize that as much data as you’re pushing from
the cloud down to the graphics processing and all that, you’re also
capturing data from point cloud data using RGB cameras, or all the
phones will start to have infrared camera sensors now. So being able
to capture that data, send it to cloud, make sense of it, all within
milliseconds, I think is really going to be a game changer for VR and
AR.

TJ: It’s a massive amount of
data, too. If you look at all those different sensors on those
devices, it’s crazy if you look at the future of volumetric video.
Well informed on Microsoft came out and said, hey, their studio does
two terabytes a minute of data capture.

Alan: Yeah, the Metastage.

TJ: With a handful of cameras
and that sort of tech, texture, and depth, and other sensors. But
you’re right, the thing that’s going to close the gap between really
powerful technology in your hands is extremely low latent,
high-bandwidth network connected to computer– very high power,
scalable computer network. And it’s not just AR/VR, right? It’s a lot
of things, although I’m focused on AR/VR. We are now going to be
putting supercomputers in everybody’s hands.

Alan: So, what 5G XR use case–
your focus is in XR. If you take 5G to the nth degree and 5G and edge
computing, you’ve got autonomous vehicles, you’ve got drones, you’ve
got– there’s all sorts of ways. But let’s focus on 5G and XR for a
second. What use cases do you guys as Verizon see as happening first?
I mean, we’re already seeing it in enterprise, where they’re using
heads-up displays to help field and service workers, and machine
workers, factory workers repair things, and see-what-I-see, and all
of these types of things. But what do you guys– what’s your roadmap
for the next 10 years, let’s say?

TJ: Yeah, it’s an interesting
question. So our organization fundamentally is working on the
platform and services that will enable very thin, lightweight
augmented reality or mixed reality glasses. So I think that’s one big
step, is to move away from the clunky form factor to something that’s
super sleek, and super powerful. So how can I have a pair of standard
Ray-Bans look and act like a Hololens times 50?

Alan: [laughs] Oh my god, that’s
a huge quote. [laughs] Think about that. “How do I make a pair
of Ray-Bans look and act like a Hololens times 50?” Oh man.

TJ: That’s the platform that we’re building, right? That’s the vision. Now, on top of that, once you do that, the world sort of your oyster in terms of what the use cases are. And enterprise is definitely the first entry point into that, because we will go through this evolutionary process with hardware for glasses, that it’s not just the compute– and we’re solving compute problems, but you do have to solve the display problem, and you have to solve a couple other things. But ultimately, at the end of the day, reduce battery power on that device, reduce battery size, reduce battery power by reducing compute on that device. And then ultimately, at the end of the day, through that step by step process, you get something in. But in the meantime, you’re going to get that adoption in the enterprise space. And so we look at — from a use case standpoint within our enterprise organization — things like worker safety, and obviously things around efficiency and improvements of workers within environments. And specifically in the industrial space right now, which seems to be where a lot of the opportunity sits, at least from companies that have been coming to us, interested in the space. There’s only so much that you can do to [inaudible] certain verticals within a market to adopt a technology. And a lot of them are a lot more forward thinking than others. So we start there.

Alan: It’s interesting that you
say that, because some of the industries that you actually think
would be the least technical — mining, for example, they haven’t
changed in 100 years — they were one of the first people to jump on
this technology, because they can use it so quickly and so easily in
manufacturing. Old school businesses that you wouldn’t think would be
technologically advanced are just making these leaps and bounds now,
it’s amazing to watch.

TJ: It’s amazing and it’s
amazing cultural thing to watch, in my view. It’s like you’d think
that these– some of these industries are so advanced and there’s so
much money, but they have old school practices. And then you look at
other ones who have been forced to innovate and change their culture
and adopt in these nascent spaces. And you scratch your head and say,
“Wow, that’s really interesting.” And so it kind of throws
you off-guard. But, you know, that’s where you have to go. You have
to go where the people have a sense of urgency and demand around it.
And then you make it happen on that front.

Alan: Interesting. I guess what
I’m trying to get at is, what are the 5G XR use cases that Verizon
thinks — or you think — will make the best use of the new networks,
of the new 5G capabilities?

TJ: We’re looking at a few with the underlying premise that you’re trying to merge the physical and digital worlds together. And so retail was– is a very big area for us, both front office and back office, or consumer focus and then back office. So if we’re looking at the consumer front for a second, we’re looking at the really interesting and I think most people can relate to use case. Here’s where I go into a retail store, and then I’m always on my phone looking at ratings, reviews, pricing information, and other things with respect to those physical products that are on the shelf. And I spend a lot more time on my phone than I actually do perusing and browsing the stuff on the shelf. And so really what we want to do is merge that physical and digital divide, by having a pair of mixed reality glasses that as you’re walking down that store — using a 5G powered headset — you’re literally taking in all the information within your field of view about a set of products and services. So now I’m standing in front of a set of consumer electronics devices, and I want to know which ones are the best rated, which one has the best value. All the stuff that’s typically online, now I can have all that stuff instantly overlaid on top of those products, whether it be makeup or electronics, or even clothing. And then take that off the rack and go and purchase it. So that’s one of the retail experiences. Other has a safety component to it, the one that you saw us demo. I have a family. I spend an inordinate amount of time at the grocery store looking at the backs of boxes, if they contain certain allergens for my family. Now I can tell my glasses to filter for products that are gluten-free, [inaudible], or kosher, whatever might be the case, then instantly everything within my field of view will light up based on those requirements.

Alan: Do you think that will be
driven by computer vision picking up the boxes, or do you think
they’ll be driven by companies, like the grocery stores — like Whole
Foods, for example — submitting planograms, so it knows what store
you’re in, the planogram knows where the boxes are, will it be
combination of both?

TJ: I think it’ll be a
combination of both, because you’ve seen it in the QR space. You’ve
seen stores do it themselves, you’ve seen third parties do it
themselves. Most of that information is actually publicly available,
those databases. And so third parties can actually easily construct
that software, but I think it’ll be dependent on obviously the
training and the learning of that object — a lot of those imagery is
publicly available — and then blend it with the publicly available
information for those products.

Alan: I know Google and Amazon
and pretty much everybody’s working on computer vision for products.
I want to point my phone at a pair of shoes and say, “What are
those shoes?” And right now we’ve got a device in our hands that
is pretty powerful and can do a lot of things right now. What are
some of the things that we can do right now with our phones, that
you’re seeing are emerging as killer use cases in this technology?

TJ: That’s a great question. Like I said, I think that going back to sort of the chokehold that current existing networks placed on augmented reality, there’s a couple areas where I see a big amount of potential for a mobile device. And I think a lot of that fits around potentially markets where you have growing economies. You look at APAC and other areas around the world, where they don’t have access to certain types of [inaudible] medical facilities. So one of the things that I saw that was really interesting, is how you could use a mobile phone and computer vision help diagnose patients, by using computer vision and artificial intelligence to look for signs that you wouldn’t necessarily be trained or have access to. One of the interesting use cases I saw was to help support a potential phlebotomist out in the field, where they’re using a phone to detect veins, so they don’t mispuncture a vein in the arm. They could do it right the first time, and completely limit the opportunity for infection.

Alan: I think that’s the
AccuVein system, isn’t it?

TJ: Mm-hm, mm-hm.

Alan: Yeah, it’s really great.

TJ: And I think that’s
transformative on a world basis, is that anytime you use technology
to add intelligence to give access to underserved or underprivileged
or markets that just don’t have the ability to. So we look at that
space, too. We look at– we talked about accessibility, I think, a
little bit. We look very much into that space also, as a way to just
improve in general. And I think we share a very similar feeling. It’s
about improving quality of life. It’s not about introducing one more
thing, one more piece of noise into the environment. How can we help
each other sort through daily life, whether it be from a medical
standpoint or being inundated with information? How do we make those
things simple?

Alan: Absolutely. And as more
and more people move into urbanized areas, there’s that culture shift
from living in the country to living in a city and– offline, we were
talking about taking our kids camping and stuff. My 11-year-old
daughter made this huge billboard poster and put it by the fire. It
said “No cell phones by the campfire.” And I think we’re
really getting to the point where the technology is pervasive. It’s
everywhere we are. My kids sit on the couch and watch TV with their
phone in their hands. And sometimes they’ve got an iPad and a phone.
It’s nuts. I don’t even know how they focus. And the other day, my
daughter was watching a show, and she had the show in a small window
and she had a game that was related to the show in the big window. So
she had like picture-in-picture, but the show wasn’t the dominant
part of it. And I thought that was really interesting, how youth are
starting to use these technologies. And we’ve done a lot of work on
delivering people entertainment content. Netflix is using AI
algorithms to give people better movies to watch. Amazon’s giving you
better algorithms to help you purchase better. What I think we need
to do is harness those technologies and give kids better ways to
learn. And I think these technologies can really catapult that. What
are your thoughts around VR, AR, AI in education and training?

TJ: Yeah, we we touched on this
a little bit. And I think the impact is absolutely [inaudible] that
space, specifically with convergence of people either domestically or
internationally from an education standpoint. I think one of the
things that you might have seen, our team produces a virtual reality
platform called Operation Convergent Response. And the idea behind
that was to aggregate or bring together a number of people with
different backgrounds and skillsets into a single virtual environment
— or a war room, essentially — so that they can help support a
natural disaster. So if there was an earthquake, bring an earthquake
expert, someone who’s an expert in fire, someone who’s an expert in
weather — or whatever might be the case — to help quickly triage
sort of a situation, without bringing them into a physical location.
That’s immense also. You can have highly custom education armaments,
where you’re bringing in specialists in different areas, that hold
all under sort of one umbrella. Let’s take VR/AR. Someone interested
in VR/AR, you could bring in an expert in virtual reality, expert in
augmented reality, expert in computer vision, and then you can
coalesce and bring all together for the students. Very specific
interests in that space, into that area, into that arena. And with
virtual reality, you can create a 100,000 square foot space in a
1,000 square space. You put 75 TV’s on the wall, you put one TV on
the wall–

Alan: Yeah, it’s great.

TJ: –you can literally create
the most dynamic environment that works for those students. And
touching on artificial intelligence for a sec, one of the most
amazing things I think that comes out of virtual reality training —
and also in the medical space and other areas — is the ability for
analytics platforms to look at every single piece of interaction
that’s going on in that space. What does that yield at the end of the
day, it yields a very efficient and effective way to help you
understand where you’re improving, where you’re falling behind. And
it’s amazing because in essence, in a typical education environment,
you’ve got to rely on a teacher — or a boss, as might be the case —
to provide that feedback, and you can’t do that for 30 students in a
classroom. But if you’ve got an analytics platform that’s in each one
of those individual students on a case-by-case basis, you can then
custom produce areas in a report where they should be improving and
moving forward. And the amount of advancement we make is just because
of that little improvement. I think it’s absolutely massive.

Alan: You nailed it. By changing
the way we teach and using exponential technologies. It’s not even a
10x improvement. It’s a 100x improvement, a 1,000x improvement
because we’re not even scratching the surface of things like how
people learn or when they learn. I learn better, maybe from 10 AM to
11 AM. That’s my maximum capacity, so all the hard stuff maybe I
learned then, and maybe somebody else learns in the evening. Maybe by
using galvanic response or measuring your heart rate or your
biometrics, you can then deliver content that is highly personalized,
highly contextualized and delivers it at the time of maximum
absorption or retention. And we’re already seeing across the board 20
to 100 percent improvements in retention rates in training. One of
the things that you guys did was use VR for hostage and robbery
training. How did that come about?

TJ: It was an interesting one.
It was actually during our early commercial stages, we were looking
at different verticals in areas where we can use technology to
obviously improve awareness and other things that happen in our
retail environments. It wasn’t specifically around hostages, more
like store robberies, which don’t happen often. But obviously, when
they do, how do you train someone in a traditional environment to
address a burglary situation, especially with someone being held at
gunpoint? So we use 360 video. We use actors and we pull together a
very immersive experience around both an armed robbery and also
identifying risks for theft by immersing them in a 360 world. We did
monitor different bio signs. We also use an analytics platform that
allows us to do gaze tracking and other things. So you saw exactly
where they were looking. What they were interested in. Were they
looking in the right spots? Were they looking in the wrong spots? And
we were able to produce a relatively detailed report based on that,
and what that allowed us to do is it allowed us to understand, as
much as you could in a replicated environment, what is the normal
response for a retail rep when these situations occur? And then it
allowed us to cater a training program around that, that helped
better prepare them for a situation. So we use it as a way to gather
analytics, which then yielded a ton of information for us that we
could never capture in a — even if you did this in a real-life
scenario and you brought in some actors and you brought in a rep and
you them in– you wouldn’t be able to understand where they were
looking, how they were acting, how they were responding, without this
type of analytics in this virtual environment. So because of that, we
felt like we were able to compose a training module that was much
more advanced than what was in the market today.

Alan: How do you measure the
success of that? What are the KPIs that you guys were looking for?

TJ: That’s a great question. And
unfortunately, we provided a lot of the technical support and
background for that while our learning development team managed the
KPIs. But I think some of the key KPIs that we used was sort of this
post mortem experience where we then place them back into into that
experience with their training to see where there are improvements.
And specifically, we use the gaze data, the biometric data, to then
see how they respond in that situation. And I don’t know what the
specific performance improvements were, but I know they were
relatively more significant. That’s sort of what’s baseline for
typical training. Unfortunately, I don’t have that data, but the
process, the methodology, was to re-immerse them back into that
situation with the tools that they now have. Again, because it’s
case-by-case and see where they were looking, how they are acting,
how they’re responding, so on and so forth.

Alan: I want to shift away from
training, because there’s so much to unpack here in the long term of
this technology. 5G is really going to enable a lot. And one of the
things that we have to overcome is some of the challenges. What are
some of the challenges that you see — or Verizon as a company sees
— as standing in the way of the broad adoption of 5G-powered XR,
beyond cheaper headsets and 5G coverage? But what do you see as the
broader challenges around adoption?

TJ: I think adoption is
dependent on establishing a community that understands the
technology, in order to build on that. And that is the other half of
our 5G labs. I own the development side. We also have a 5G lab–
multiple 5G labs, spread across the country which provide developers
and enterprises access to this technology, so they can understand it.
So education is hugely critical. We are very immersed in the
technical side of things. So we’ve won those Edge awards, very
technical. And the work we do, while deeply technical, has to be
translated to a common level. And I think our biggest hurdle and
challenge is making that consumable to the end user. And we are
solving that through our 5G labs. We are providing developers with
training and access to 5G networks, providing enterprises with a full
view into the capability. So as much as we’re having this
conversation here, any CTO or CIO or even CEO listening, visit our 5G
labs. You’ll get a full view of what we’re doing and how it can apply
to your business. There are so many companies across so many
verticals that it really helps them understand and inspire what they
what they could do with the technology.

Alan: It’s interesting that you
guys created these 5G labs with the purpose of showing what the
technology can do. One of the reasons we actually started XR Ignite
was the same thing. We kept seeing all these amazing startups coming
up with crazy, amazing ideas on how to use XR and AI, but the they
were missing the business acumen to be able to take those
technologies and bring them to a commercialized state. We formed XR
Ignite to kind of help bridge that gap between corporations and
startups. And it sounds like you guys are doing the same. Sounds like
there’s an interesting fit there. We’ll talk offline and see if we
can collaborate.

TJ: Yeah, no, absolutely. I
think there’s there’s great opportunity for anyone looking and
interested in it.

Alan: So what is the most
important thing that businesses can start to do now to leverage the
power of XR, and AI, and 5G? What can they start doing immediately to
reap the benefits?

TJ: Yeah, I think any company
should — just like we do here — is to assign someone from the
strategy side of the business to either bring someone in or to do
their own objective (and to some extent, subjective) view of
collection of information. There’s so much data out there. There’s so
much information out there. You know, the stuff that I’m talking
about is very topical in the sense that this is stuff that you and I
have access to. And we’re very immersed in this space. Obviously, we
know relatively well, but anyone in any space could find the same
amount of information. I work at a very deep technical level, which
obviously makes not much sense to businesses until we translate that
into a business function at the end of the day. But one or two people
in an organization can compile some really compelling amount of data
and information that exists out there, to really help transform
businesses with this technology. So I think it’s just that first step
that you need to take to say AR, VR; what is this about? Right? What
does this mean to my business? And I think they’ll be surprised.

Alan: We actually started
MetaVRse as a consulting firm to help businesses understand how to
use this technology, because our long-term vision was always
education. And so we’ve kind of morphed into consulting on how to use
this technology specifically for education, training, learning
modules and stuff like that. But with XR Ignite, it’s pretty broad.
There’s so many companies out there building such great tech and
everybody is chomping at the bit to do start leveraging 5G. And I had
a meeting a couple weeks ago and I got to see the new Samsung s10 5G
phone, and it was the first time I’d ever held a 5G phone in my hand
and it kind of felt like this new renaissance of technology is
coming, and it’s going to come as a tidal wave, because it’s been
years that people have been working on it. I don’t know, Verizon’s
probably working on this for a decade. So it’s coming and it’s going
to come really fast for people. What can consumers do to prepare for
that? Because I think by having a 5G phone is great. It’s faster,
whatever. But really, what can consumers expect from that?

TJ: If you look at where we were
with 4G and sort of this scale and ubiquity of 4G were in that same
phase. — and not just in this scale, but also in sort of the
advancement of technology — I think one of the things… so just
sort of prefacing this, one of the things that is interesting is that
the iPhone didn’t release a 4G iPhone until about a year and a half
later. And I think once the network launched, I think part of that is
because there are ramp ups to this technology as it gets exposed and
becomes more accessible to developers, they could start building
experiences on top of that, that really validates the value
proposition of 5G. As it stands right now, the biggest value
proposition of 5G is just the ability to download an immense amount
of content in a quick amount of time. Right? So I want to download
entire season The Sopranos through HBO Go, or whatever might be the
case, before I’m about to hop on a plane or I’m going to make a split
second decision. You know, I don’t have to wait 10, 15, 20 minutes to
do that. I can literally do that within 30 seconds or less.

Alan: That’s insane.

TJ: It really makes on demand
“on demand,” right? It used to be that you had to plan some
stuff, or– one of the great things, I have got music service and
unfortunately where I am down at the shore on the beach, I don’t have
access to — because I’m pretty remote — to that network. And so I
want to be able to download an entire alternative 90s collection of
music of 10,000 songs in…a minute? Less than that?

Alan: OK. I got to just… what
the hell, man? I used to be a DJ for 20 years and I remember going to
the record store and you’d buy a record. Then I had a collection of
books of CDs, and I remember when my daughter was about 10 and I gave
her my CD collection, and she looked at me, she’s like, “what do
I need that for? It all fits in my iPod.” And now we’re talking
about downloading entire genre of music in seconds.

TJ: It’s quite crazy. Again,
that’s just scratching the surface of 5G. Beyond that, there are a
lot of other things that we foresee with the implementation of the
Edge network that we talked about and providing access to developers.
One of the things that I did wanted to touch on is sort of our last
piece a minute ago was that developers, the XR space is still nascent
enough that if you’re a business, their may [be]– or likely isn’t —
a solution for your business today. And so I’d encourage businesses
to go out there, understand the technology and build their own
solutions, because half of our practice, going back to our commercial
period, was a pro services organization and we were just all ears. We
would listen to what companies would come to us with challenges and
then we would solve those problems for those businesses. And one of
the benefits of being Verizon, a massive company that we are, is that
we’ve got so much diversity. We’ve got retail. We have network
operations, sales. Right? We can hear these challenges from all these
organizations and build solutions that no developer would ever really
think of to build. So I’d encourage businesses to go out there and
not just look for answers to their problems, but work with folks that
can solve those problems.

Alan: That was our entire
business model, was to create some solutions, sit and listen to
customers, figure what they wanted and build it for them and then
develop those into products. Literally. That was our our entire
business model, was just, listen! And that would create products,
which it has.

TJ: This is an SAP, right? I
know I need some sort of platform. I go to SAP and they’re like, I
get inside a box software and just customize it. Then that’s answer
for my business. That’s not the state of XR. And if you can jump on
that as a business, I think you’ll have a major upper hand like we do
here. So I’ll give you one example. We have a team that’s responsible
for going out and working with community. You have them understand
where we’re going to be putting 5G cell sites. And one of the things
they do is they hire a graphic artist, a number of graphic artists,
to go out and draw what a cell site would look like in a community
and they would do it in Photoshop and other tools right there. And
then they would bring it to the community board meetings. San
Francisco would be the case and say, hey, these are the sites that we
want to produce. Right? And this is what the tower is going to look
like on this building or on this light pole, whatever might be the
case. And it costs them on average just in this one section of the
US, $5-million a year contract, graphic artists. So what we did, and
what they asked us to do, is how do we solve this problem with
augmented reality? Can we just take the poles that they would draw,
import them as 3D models and then just drop them into the
environment, capture that photo with our camera and submit that to
them to the town planning meeting? We said, absolutely. The Verizon
rep goes out there, they go to a corner, they pick the pole that they
want. They change the color of the pole to match the environment.
Right? And then they set it right on the plane of the ground. And
then they capture a picture and they upload that picture for the
board planning meeting. And literally, that application probably took
a month to develop and saved in saving our business $5-million
dollars a year just in this one area. That was not something that
we’d ever imagined building. But we took that cost out of the
business.

Alan: Amazing. Some of the cost
savings that I’ve heard on different interviews on this podcast have
been insane.

TJ: It’s an insane amount of
money, for relatively simple implementation of the technology.

Alan: So with that, last
question; what problem in the world do you want to see solved using
XR technologies?

TJ: I want to see people’s lives
become simpler. Everything that we build, from a technology
standpoint, very complex in nature. I think the fundamental idea is
to make people’s lives simpler and to make people’s lives safer. I
think we’ve come to a point at technology just earns us so much that
you companies out there that are now creating artificial digital
clones of ourselves to manage the information overload that we have
coming in, so we provide them with a set of rules and
responsibilities that they could take on our behalf. And I don’t
think that’s necessary, if you would, in a way that filters out the
noise and makes everything [inaudible]. And I think what that is, is
that that’s blending the digital and physical by… I don’t want to
be constantly distracted by my cell phone when I’m camping. Right?
Because there’s something interesting that I just saw, maybe out in
the wild. Was that a deer? Was that whatever might be the case? With
glasses, I think that information is so passive to you that we no
longer have to be distracted by our device and we can tune in and
tune out things as needed. And my view at the end of the day is, we
strive for simplicity in our lives. And I think that’s what we want
to go with this technology.

Alan: Oh, I love that. Striving
for simplicity with our lives, using the most advanced technologies
in the world. I don’t know what better way to wrap that up, but thank
you so much. Thank you, everyone, for listening. If you want to learn
more about the work that T.J. and his team are doing at Verizon, you
can visit verizon.com, envrmnt.com, or verizon5glabs.com. I think
those are the three places where everybody can get as much
information as they want. Thank you again, TJ. This has been amazing.

TJ: Thanks, Alan. I look forward
to talking to you soon.