Verizon launches FiOS TV in two more states, presses for a national franchising process and expands VOD

The US telecoms giant Verizon has extended its FiOS TV television service to five states including Texas and Florida. Verizon launched its TV service in September and intends to deploy in 16 US states where it is building a Fibre-to-the-Premise infrastructure. This aggressive rollout is being backed by lobbying in Washington to reform the cable franchise approval process. Verizon chairman and CEO Ivan Seidenberg told members of the US Senate’s commerce committee in February that a national video franchising process was needed to improve competition.

There are now just over 350 broadcast TV channels available to subscribers including 20-22 channels of HDTV depending on the local market. The comprehensive video offer also includes around 1,800 on-demand titles today with plans to increase that to 2,000 by the spring. This includes movies-on-demand and television-on-demand.

The company operates an unusual hybrid network that uses IP delivery for VOD but QAM modulated signals for broadcast TV. This means live TV delivery is similar to cable except, unlike on the shared last mile typical of Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC), Verizon dedicates bandwidth to each building.

Verizon’s Fibre-to-the-Premise system is capable of delivering up to 100Mbps for each customer, so there is no need for advanced encoding in the foreseeable future - even with HDTV. All services are being delivered using the mature MPEG-2 compression standard, which offers significant cost advantages, since MPEG-2 encoders and set-top boxes are cheaper than those supporting the MPEG-4 Part 10 or SMPTE VC-1 codecs.