Taking the retail view to telecom

It is that forward-looking approach that has Mueller pointing Qwest in the direction of much fatter broadband pipes, not delivering IPTV over its access networks.

“If you look at the marketplace and the consumer today, when it comes to what they consider first, the broadband connection and video are about tied; the telephone is not your first call,” Mueller said. “I believe our children want to go get the customized [high-definition] content that they want, whether it's simulcast games, which you can get off an Internet feed, or information from National Geographic for a school project on Kenyan wildlife.”

That view is considerably shaped by the retail experience, where Mueller said things are getting “more personalized, not less.” In video, the world is going from “three broadcast channels to 500 cable channels to customized delivery of just what you want,” he said.

To accommodate that approach, Qwest is more focused on delivering the fattest broadband pipes it can over a fiber-to-the-node infrastructure. Ultimately, what Qwest expects to deliver is an Internet connection at speeds of up to 38 Mb/s, using VDSL2 technology and pair-bonding, and offering much faster upstream bandwidth than Internet services do today. And instead of using up part of that bandwidth to deliver its own IPTV service, Qwest will be open to allowing its customers to find the HD video-on-demand that it believes will be available on the Internet.

“I don't want to do IPTV; it's too expensive and there's not enough scale,” Mueller said. “We won't be able to keep up on content.”

Instead, Qwest is reselling DirecTV and, Mueller said, has more video subscribers than AT&T U-verse or Verizon FiOS. “We believe [consumers] will want a customized ability to get HD video-on-demand,” Mueller said. “And the only way to do that is to have enough bandwidth so it's real-time.”