Verizon Wireless is unveiling a new app today exclusive to Android called Viewdini. It’s a search engine that aggregates video content from a number of services such as Netflix, Hulu Plus, mSpot and Comcast’s Xfinity and showcases featured content that samples from each of them.
The peculiar part is that this isn’t an app coming from any regular developers or from Google itself — it’s from a carrier. The carriers have been crying for years about how data should be capped and throttled because we use more than they can handle. So why is Verizon Wireless launching a service that’s almost guaranteed to result in customers unknowingly going over their data caps after streaming too much video.
“We are just seeing a hunger for people wanting to watch video,” said Verizon Wireless CEO Dan Mead. “I think this will capture the audience’s imagination.”
Rest assured Mead says Verizon Wireless does not want to scare customers and it gives plenty of warnings to ensure people are never surprised if they approach or go over their monthly data limits. It still seems like a clever ploy on Verizon’s part to launch a video service maybe not to create more overage fees, but instead for new customers to consider purchasing a larger data plan.
Of course this probably wouldn’t be possible without Verizon’s 4G LTE network. Mead feels confident that it will hold up just fine. “What we’re seeing is the growth that we wanted to see,” he said. “What we are seeing is customers discovering the breadth of what they can do on the Verizon network. We’re very encouraged by that.”
Viewdini will be available on Google Play soon and Verizon says it’ll eventually release a version of the app for other operating systems as well.