Cisco’s marketing department has continued their cuddly product naming with the announcement of umi (pronounced you-me) last week. It’s basically Skype or in Cisco-speak, “telepresense,” for regular folks.
And by regular folks they mean TV-watchers with an Internet connection but without a laptop and video camera. I’m sure Cisco business development crunched the numbers and decided there’s a ton of money selling $600 set top boxes with a $24.99 monthly charge to this segment.
The other perpetrators involved in this scheme include BestBuy, which will sell the gear, and Verizon, which plans to resell the service to its Fios customers.Continue reading