Good news for Canadians who can't seem to get a decent internet plan for home. Rogers has unveiled a 3G station for residential use dubbed the Rocket Hub, and with it a number of jet propulsion-related puns that we'll be taking painstaking measures to avoid. It boasts 7.2Mbps HSPA, WiFi and ethernet out, and voice calls over UMTS. Makes sense since it's riding an Ericsson W3x core. Upfront cost of hardware hasn't been disclosed yet, but plans start at $35 Canadian. Launch date (okay, we couldn't resist) is sometime later this month.

Verizon Communications CEO Ivan Seidenberg isn't too upbeat on the future of landlines, telling the audience at a Goldman Sachs investor conference today that the company is just not interested in telephones connected with wires. The chief exec of one of the nation's biggest telecommunications firms continued with his gospel, saying his "thinking has matured" and that trying to predict when the dwindling landline business will plateau is akin to "the dog chasing the bus." He says the new way of thinking is "liberating," but of course, endeavors like the Hub technically don't count as landlines to the company since it'sVoIP, and the coupled with its continued success as the largest cellular provider in terms of subscriber base, yeah, we're sure it's not too tough a pill to swallow. So how abut ramping up FiOS installations just a wee bit faster, eh Ivan?

Verizon's landline-slaying (read: self-slaying) Hub will be getting a $50 price cut on a two-year contract come this Friday, which brings the grand total down to $149.99; alternatively, you'll now be able to get it for $219.99 on a one-year commitment or $299.99 completely devoid of the legal paperwork. According to the shot we have, Verizon is "reinventing" the price, but let's be honest -- either this thing isn't selling worth a damn or they'd like to move some inventory in preparation for the Hub 2 launch. Either way, it's an exciting time to be in the market.

We've been on the trail of the Verizon Hub since way back when it was called the Verizon One, in fact, but it's just been officially announced, and there are plenty of details to report now. The system boasts a 7-inch touchscreen display, and will work with Verizon wireless subscribers handset(s) to eliminate the need for a landline (people still have those!?) The idea here is that the hub can sync to your calendar, contacts, maps, traffic and weather reports via broadband. It can also send and receive text messages, and do all kinds of cute little tasks like send driving directions to your phone. Subscribers have to live in an E911-capable area, and will be able to bring any phone number with them if they want to sign up for new service. The hardware's going to cost $200 (after a $50 mail-in rebate) with a subscription fee of $35 per month -- which comes with unlimited minutes and texts to and from the device. It'll be available starting February 1st. Get ready.

[Via Phone Scoop]

Our tipster tells us these bad boys can't be activated just yet, but they'll be available in stores as of February 1 -- and you won't need anything crazy like FiOS to get 'em. The Hub is the evolution of the Verizon One concept first shown at CES two years ago, featuring family-friendly features like a digital corkboard, scheduler, photo frame functionality, and integration with Verizon Wireless handsets to fire MMS shots straight to the screen. In a way, you can think of it as the watered-down realization of that awesome videophone in Back To The Future II, but with less teleconferencing and fax capability and way, way less Lea Thompson.

The Hub is shaping up to being one of the greatest untold gadget dramas of the past decade. Okay, maybe that's an overstatement -- but seriously, what exactly is this thing? Part of the story is that it's a virtual corkboard and picture frame for families in the same vein as the Verizon One and AT&T's HomeManager, but we've also heard that it'll play nice with picture messaging and other services from Verizon Wireless phones -- in other words, it's the secret sauce that'll let Verizon control your entire communications ecosystem. Word on the street is that Hubs have arrived in Verizon stores with strict orders from corporate not to bust open the boxes until told to do so, so in the meantime, enjoy a shot of the surprisingly attractive box design. We're being told that the official launch will come before mid-February, so we'll get this all sorted before too long.

We're still trying to piece together the Verizon Hub mystery -- namely whether it'll be available outside the realm of Verizon's FiOS broadband customer base -- but either way, we have some evidence here that it'll play nice with the Verizon Wireless handset of your choice. The device was designed from the start to be the be-all, end-all wireline home base (hence the name), so it really comes as no surprise that there'd be some interaction with mobiles for those rare occasions when you simply must leave your home. What you see here are a couple of diagrams (just follow the arrows!) involving the transfer of information to and from Verizon Wireless-branded cellphones; in the first, an address is looked up using the Hub's yellow pages facility, located on a map, then transferred to an LG VX9400. In the second, a lovely photograph from a beach (seriously, what are we doing in front of a computer right now?) is snapped and transferred to a Hub, where it's displayed in real time. Fun stuff -- let's hope owners of any old broadband connection are going to be able to partake.

We've gotten the inside track on a few dates on Verizon's radar for the next few months, and it looks like the boys and girls in red are prepping an interesting mix of exclusive and Sprint catch-ups to keep customers fat and happy. As handsets go, the Motorola Q9c is planned for April along with the TouchFLO-powered XV6900, LG enV2, and the CDMA rendition of the BlackBerry Curve (so much for exclusivity clauses on this one, it seems), while the Samsung Glyde is currently slated for late April or early May. Centro fans will be happy to hear that the diminutive Garnet phone will finally hit Verizon following Sprint and AT&T launches in the tail end of May or the beginning of June, followed shortly by the Nokia 6205, which apparently isn't either the 2505 or 7205 unless one of those flips have been renumbered.

As technology goes, Verizon looks to launch EV-DO Rev. A-based push-to-talk services -- Sprint folks will know this as Qualcomm's QChat -- toward the end of May. We've also caught wind of something called "Verizon Hub," which we're told will go head-to-head with T-Mobile's HotSpot@Home service. It's not known whether this'll be a WiFi setup (a la HotSpot@Home) or adopt Sprint's CDMA femtocell strategy, but seeing how Verizon and Sprint seem to be endlessly engaged in a game of cat and mouse, we wouldn't be surprised to see 'em go with femtocells. We don't have a date on Hub just yet, but it's targeting the second half of the year at the earliest.

Update: Commenters are noting that Verizon's do-all FiOS phone bares the "Verizon Hub" name, though it doesn't go head-to-head with HotSpot@Home -- and the Hub we're referring to is showing up on Verizon Wireless roadmaps. Weird. We'll keep a close eye on this one.