Qwest

Qwest Into IPTV

Posted by samc on June 19th, 2007

Qwest has been taking a “wait and see” approach when it comes to telcoTV, says Broadband Reports, though they did recently issue an RFP exploring their options, reports the Denver Post. Qwest is the only Baby Bell that hasn’t launched a major upgrade of its network. Verizon is spending $18 billion while AT&T plans to spend some $5 billion. While Verizon is laying fiber directly to individual homes, AT&T will use VDSL over copper to deliver IPTV.

Qwest and Portland, Oregon, are near a deal that would allow the phone company to start offering cable TV sometime next year, reports The Oregonian. Qwest’s franchise application will be considered in July.

Qwest and city staff both remain optimistic about the deal, but there are a lot of details to work through, said David Olson, director of Portland’s Cable office.

Qwest plans to lay fiber only as far as Portland’s neighborhoods. It will then use copper to bring TV, data and voice the rest of the way. Like AT&T’s Universe service.

Qwest hasn’t set rates for its Portland TV service, but in the Denver area it charges about $48 a month for a 170-channel cable TV package. In Portland, Comcast subscribers pay $50.89 for a package of 70 channels. Both companies offer discounts to customers who also subscribe to phone or Internet service.

Comcast’s franchise agreement with Multnomah County regulators requires it to carry various public access, community and government programming, and to pay fees associated with the franchise and that programming. Qwest said it is willing to pay any fees, and carry any programming, that Comcast does.

Meanwhile, Verizon says it plans to offer HD video, on demand over their FiOS network, although it has not yet set a date.

Capital spending on broadband networks is on the rise, says Business Week.

Private equity players are placing enormous bets on the industry, such as the $8.2 billion that Silver Lake Partners and the Texas Pacific Group agreed to pay for networking gearmaker Avaya on June 5. And the glut in broadband communications capacity is all but gone.

About half of the Internet’s transmission capacity was going unused in 2002. Today that pipeline has almost doubled in size, and yet the unused portion is down to about 30%. As a result, the price that companies pay for bandwidth in some parts of the U.S. is on the rise after six years of declines. “All of us are planning expansions of our backbones in order to support growth in Internet applications and video,” says Dan Yost, executive vice-president for product at Denver-based communications provider Qwest Communications.

Perhaps the best indicator of the telecom revival is this startling data point: Profits for the industry this year are expected to reach an all-time high of $72 billion, topping for the first time the high-water mark of $65 billion in 1998.

But telecom’s revival has implications way beyond Wall Street. A dollar spent on telecom infrastructure produces an outsize impact on the U.S. economy as a whole. Indeed, a growing body of research has found that telecom investment plays a vital role in stimulating economic growth and productivity–more so than money spent on roads, electricity, or even education.

Communication assets generate massive benefits by slashing the cost of doing business across the economy. A high-speed data network suddenly makes it easier and cheaper for all kinds of workers to place orders, service customers, and drum up new business.

source : dailywireless.org