A Qwest for Growth - Triple Play of Voice, Data, TV (
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Is it critical for
Qwest to have a triple play of voice, data and television?
From a Qwest perspective, we do not believe it is necessary
to build your own head-end infrastructure and to create content deals in order
to deliver a service that looks a lot like a cable service. Qwest believes
fundamentally as a company we are going to embrace partnerships.
We have a wonderful partnership with DirecTV. However, as
DirecTV evolves, they are also starting to incorporate video-on-demand on their
higher-end set tops, particularly the high-definition TV accounts where they
have an Ethernet interface. We are doing the same thing. We are really starting
to enable a video model that is going to start leveraging the Internet.
You look at the Internet as really becoming the ultimate
open-delivery network for video. I’m talking about video-on-demand in the much
broader sense. For carriers today, when they have video-on-demand, it is
whatever content I say you can get at, and it’s still a relatively limited
library.
You look at this and compare it to what happened to Web
browsing. When the Internet started with the original Mosaic, the number of Web
sites available was quite limited.
What the Internet did was basically create a model where
anyone could share content. I think that trend is going to happen here in
video.
Picture a future where instead of putting up a Web site, I
can put up the equivalent of a sort of Internet TV station, and that can be
available anywhere globally. We’re betting on the Internet, and we think in
five to 10 years there will be no question that the Internet will be the
dominant delivery mechanism for video content.
What about your
wireless plans?
It’s really the same story as video. Qwest does not believe that
we have to build everything ourselves in order to offer a best-in-class
service. We have announced a partnership with Verizon Wireless and we will
basically put Verizon Wireless on the equivalent of our store shelf, as we put
DirecTV there.
Can you tell us about
your new qHome service?
What we’re doing is taking the [Microsoft] Windows Live and
the Messenger framework and we’re integrating that with our traditional
wireline infrastructure. So if you are a Qwest DSL
customer and you have your Messenger client going, and you receive a phone call
to your wireline phone, you’ll see a pop-up in Messenger.
By the way, if that individual leaves a voice mail, in
addition to the traditional way of retrieving a voice mail, you will get that
voice mail as an MP3 in an e-mail in your Windows Live account. You’ll also
have full access to call logs and your other services.
So, it is really all about this idea of simplification and
starting to tie services together. Now, that’s really just a first step, but
think of how you can start to leverage that with the DirecTV partnership and
the Verizon Wireless partnership.
It starts to tie all these services very nicely
together in ways that others who even have the services themselves are not
doing at this point.
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