CenturyTel brings Broadband TV to 25 states

CenturyTel launched a Broadband TV product last week that is immediately available to anyone with the company’s broadband service. The new streaming video service is delivered across a 1.5 Mb/s channel or higher and viewed on a subscriber’s PC.

There are currently 24 channels of real-time television available through MobiTV, the company CenturyTel contracts with for content delivery.

“It is available everywhere CenturyTel offers a broadband connection,” a company spokeswoman said. “There is nothing to install, nothing to download. It’s just live streaming video through a Web site.”

The service will launch in 25 states and now includes a video-on-demand feature. Its wide range of programming including news, weather, sports, history, financial reports, comedy, programs for the family and kids, movies, TV classics and more.

“One of our value-adds is that our customers are rural, and these are services you can only typically get in a metropolitan area,” the spokeswoman said. “We are trying to continue to bring not only broadband to our rural customers but also some value-add on top of that.”

CenturyTel will continually add entertainment choices such as music, on-demand movie and sports programming. With CenturyTel Broadband TV, there is no hardware or software to install.

“MobiTV is out there negotiating for the content, and as of last week, we have 29 basic channels—which they are adding to all the time—three premium channels and an on-demand video product,” the spokeswoman said.

The contract with MobiTV was signed in March; CenturyTel’s first began offering service in April.

People who are stuck in airports love it, the spokeswoman said.