In what could be a radical move, Qwest's CEO Dick Notebaert is mulling whether or not to forgo building a costly broadcast network, like Verizon and AT&T have done for their IPTV services. Instead, Qwest would offer a pure video on-demand service. Broadcast services bring with them a lot of headaches for would be operators, since they require video franchising agreements. VOD services, however, do not require them. Deals with content providers are still necessary, of course. DirecTV would provide Qwest, as it does now, with the live TV feed.
For more on Qwest's decision:
- see this article in the WSJ (sub. req.)