CenturyLink has announced it's conducting trials in four markets of a new over-the-top streaming video service in four markets. Centurylink did not indicate which markets will see the trials, when the service will formally launch, or how much the new service will cost. The service will be dubbed "Prism Stream" and should be made formally available later this year, after CenturyLink finishes testing the product and secures all broadcaster streaming rights.
According to CenturyLink, what the company is working on won't be all that different from the
new streaming effort announced by AT&T this week.
"The product we're building, which is pretty close to AT&T's new video product, is an over the top product that caters to the millennial generation," CenturyLink CTO Aamir Hussain told a conference this week. "It has smaller packages and we are going to trial it in four markets outside of our Prism footprint just to learn from that and understand what penetration it can bring."
The company also noted that the service can reach more people than it's Prism IPTV service (with 285,000 current subscribers) because it will consume less bandwidth.
"We just soft launched our Prism Stream product and that takes the same package going over the top," Hussain said. "When you go over the top, you reduce the minimum broadband requirement from 25 Mbps to 10 Mbps and it enables a lot more homes."
CenturyLink faces the same dilemma as AT&T and other ISPs interested in jumping into the streaming game: how does a telco not known for innovation compete with Netflix, at the same time launching a product that won't cannibalizing its other TV offerings? One way is by offering the product at a higher price but exempting it from your usage caps (aka "zero rating") -- something CenturyLink may attempt given its announcement to
begin charging overage fees later this year.