Qwest executives reiterate their opinion to Telephony Online that they don't need to get into the IPTV business, because the "young consumers of the future" are going to want to find that content online themselves. Qwest's frequently delayed current plan (leaked to us first last Summer) is to spend $300 million to deliver 20Mbps VDSL to about 1.5 million customers over the next two years. The company is also testing line-bonded VDSL at speeds of 38Mbps. Says the company's CEO of their IPTV-bashfulness:

With pair bonding to the home, we believe it may be possible to (offer 40Mbps). -Qwest CEO Ed Mueller

DirecTV (whose service Qwest resells) will soon be offering customers VOD using home broadband connections, which is probably playing a big part in Mueller's thinking. Qwest apparently is justifying their stance by saying the traditional broadcast model may become irrelevant -- and if not, they already offer video through DirecTV, so why spend the extra money. The company's CTO had this to say about you young, bandwidth hungry whipper-snappers:While Qwest is consistently criticized for playing wait-and-see with video, the decision could ultimately come back to be the right one if Internet video-delivery trumps IPTV projects like AT&T's U-Verse. Of course if the company is really focused on just providing bandwidth, they'd be better served long-term by embracing FTTH. However, they lack Verizon's financial resources to do so, which is why they're embracing select deployment of VDSL.

Of course we should note that the company the only baby bell to employ cable-style download caps (albeit rather generous ones), which could pose a problem once DirecTV's HD-video-delivery system goes mainstream.