"Not only does it let you communicate with your device to a VGo device... but it also gives you a dimension of mobility," he said. "We have a bunch of customers who put a VGo where their [work-related] team is and they have remote workers in international and other locations and they connect up every day for multiple hours and they're truly there. They can drive the unit, as it's controlled remotely, so they're fully empowered to go wherever they need to go."

One of the most striking uses of LTE at yesterday's demonstration came in the realm of transportation, as the team at the Innovation Center has put together prototype cars and bicycles that incorporate the 4G wireless technology into their standard functionality. How does this work in practice? In the case of the bicycle, the team is experimenting with having a Web camera strapped to the front of the bike while having another Web camera and monitor attached to the handle bars facing the rider. So if a parent needs to see exactly where their child is riding their bicycle or if they need to summon them home for dinner, they can now do so by using a home interface that connects with both cameras.

The Innovation Center team got even more ambitious in its attempts to integrate LTE into a car, as the interface they designed lets users chat with family and coworkers and monitor live camera footage from their homes and offices while sitting in the driver's seat. (Verizon reps take pains to emphasize that you should only use these features while either parked or stopped at a red light.) Having cameras directly outside your car has advantages too, as Verizon demonstrated the LTE car's ability to catch the license plate number of a car that did a bump-and-run on the LTE car while it was parked.

While not all of the products on display at the Innovation Center will be sure-fire hits with consumers - and let's face it, some of them may never make it out of the lab - they definitely show that LTE networks will be able to do a lot more besides simply powering consumer handsets and laptop dongles. And while we don't know for sure whether the future will look anything like Disney's Tomorrowland, we can at least feel comfortable that it will have lots of high-bandwidth wireless networks.

in Network World's Anti-malware section.