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Quietly, Qwest invests in other people’s tech Greg Avery February 24, 2010 Qwest stopped putting money into its
Internet-delivered video after CEO Ed Mueller arrived in
mid-2007, so it may surprise some that the Denver-based telecom
invests in other company’s Internet video technology.
Multichannel
News, a television trade magazine,
unearthed Wednesday
that Qwest Communications International Inc. is among several
telecoms to put money into startup ZillionTV, a
Qwest invested $10 million in ZillionTV expects to start delivering 15,000
movies, TV shows and other videos in the second half of 2010 and
“has distribution agreements with several studios including Walt
Disney Co., 20th Century Fox Television, NBC Universal, Sony and
Warner Bros.,” Multichannel News said. The information about the telecoms’ investment
in ZillionTV came out in a lawsuit filed by a former employee of
ZillionTV. Qwest spokeswoman Kate Oravez issued a
statement late Wednesday about its investment in ZillionTV. “In 2009, Qwest made a very small investment
in Zillion, which was developing a new approach to video
technology. Qwest is always looking into new and innovative ways
to perfect its customer experience.” The company has, from time to time, invested
in technology companies. It makes sense that Qwest would have an
interest in fostering technology to deliver video over its
network. The company’s invested hundreds of millions of
dollars extending its fiber optic network deeper into
neighborhoods so it can offer residential speeds of up to 40
megabits-per-second. Increasing consumer use of bandwidth for
things like video is primary reason for the investment. Qwest’s souped-up, “fiber-to-the-node”
deployment passes 3.5 million households in its 14-state
territory with now, and the company continues to expand it. This comes as Qwest finishes shutting down its
Choice TV service that it offered for a decade. It had 42,000
customers for the Internet television service — most of them in
suburbs south of Denver and around Phoenix — but it turned off
Choice TV for good at the end of 2009. That service made Qwest a video distributor
much like a cable company is, and similar to what AT&T does with
its UVerse service and Verizon does with FIOS in their local
phone territories. Zillion would simply ride across Qwest’s
network, offering its customers content but not involving the
telecom in the expensive and sometimes nasty business of
negotiating content distribution deals.
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