As preparations continue for the IP&TV Forum North America, being held in New York this July, we spoke to Steve Sklar, Director of Product Partnerships at Qwest Communications, who will be speaking at the event.  Mr Sklar has worked in the video and communications industry since 1988, and in his current role leads the group responsible for strategy and performance of Qwest’s partnerships with DIRECTV and Verizon Wireless, as well as managing Qwest’s broadband content initiatives.


Where does Qwest see the video-over-Internet market going in the short to medium term?

Qwest believes that video usage over the Internet will continue to proliferate both in the area of professionally-produced content and user-generated content.  This trend presents an excellent opportunity for Qwest to provide higher-speed Internet offerings to our customers - whether it’s 7 Mbps, 12 Mbps or 20 Mbps - to provide the best customer experience while downloading or streaming video.

Qwest is offering more content choices in its Internet portal to meet customers growing demand in this area.  If a customer visits their Qwest portal to check email or voice mail or to scheduling a DVR recording on DIRECTV, it's natural that we would offer them content though partners like Starz.

What were the deciding factors in Qwest's decision to phase out Choice TV and migrate its pay-TV customers to DIRECTV?  Does Qwest see managed-network IPTV services as having a limited lifespan, given the steady growth of online video and increasing bandwidth capacity?   

The VDSL migration was driven by our need to move away from a legacy platform that didn't permit us to provide the higher Internet speeds that customers require and didn't keep up with the evolving demands of TV customers. This was the precursor platform to IPTV and it was not capable of providing the robust U-Verse style offering.  Being able to offer customers speeds up to 20 Mbps bundled with the premier video service in the country through our DIRECTV partnership is a much better customer experience.

As far as managed-network IPTV goes, the challenge of investing in today's environment relates to the shift we're seeing to greater consumption of on-demand content and increasing over-the-top options and you have to ask yourself whether you can get a return on building infrastructure for a 300+ channel linear offering to compete with cable.

Do you think the continued growth in online video can be counterbalanced with more effective content security, encouraging premium content providers to move further into online delivery?

We're seeing increasing activity online with premium content providers like Hulu, Amazon and others. While content security is critical, I don't see that being the inhibitor of further growth.  The bigger questions are about extending content to the TV and what this will require when it comes to business models, and how incumbent providers like cable and satellite will extend their offerings to broadband and mobile.  

Regarding the monetisation of OTT video in the current environment, what strategies do you think hold most promise?  And where does that leave the broadband operator?

Qwest is a big believer that the intersection of satellite and broadband is extremely powerful, especially when you leverage the best a broadband service provider can bring to the table in terms of content delivery and the extension of communications-related applications to the TV.  Regarding OTT we are looking at opportunities that will drive adoption of higher speed offerings as an alternative for customers that don't want to take a premium television product like DIRECTV from Qwest. We're watching closely to see if any new business models can be spawned whether it’s through an ad-supported model or a hybrid of broadcast and VOD.

Mr Sklar will be delivering a presentation entitled 'Delivering TV over satellite in partnership with broadband' on Day 1 of the IP&TV Forum North America.

This year's IP&TV Forum North America (www.iptv-northamerica.com) event will take place in the Millennium Broadway Hotel, New York, on July 21st-22nd.  For more details and to register for the event please click here