CenturyLink attacks Cox Nevada with its Prism IPTV service

Move over Cox Communications Southern Nevada: here comes CenturyLink's (NYSE: CTL) Prism IPTV.

Calling it "the most advanced television service available in Southern Nevada," the independent ILEC is ready to battle Cox's aggressive broadband-based business and bread and butter residential video business.

Over the past 18 months, CenturyLink has prepared its Southern Nevada network to support video with an upgraded core fiber network, new switches and related video service components to launch its IPTV service. Similar to the other markets where it currently delivers Prism IPTV, CenturyLink leverages a Fiber to the Node (FTTN) architecture that leverages ADSL2+ with bonding to connect with the residential customer.

Overall, CenturyLink's Prism is competitive, offering customers a lineup of 230 all-digital channels, in addition to pay-per-view and video-on-demand.

Of course, both service providers believe they have upper hand with their respective video offering.

Juergen Barbusca, Cox manager of communications, public and government affairs in Las Vegas, maintained that its HFC network is not only more mature than CenturyLink's but that "everybody in our footprint can get our highest advertised speeds."

Jeff Oberschelp, CenturyLink's vice president and general manager in Nevada, told the Las Vegas Sun that the Prism IPTV service is not available to Southern Nevada household, its "offerings are only going to get better" and it's growing every day.

However, the one thing CenturyLink and Cox do agree on is that customers can save money on their monthly communications service bill by purchasing a triple play bundle. CenturyLink estimates a consumer could save $180 year, while Cox estimates it can save consumers $240 a year by purchasing the bundle.

For more:
- Las Vegas Sun has this article
- here's FierceCable's take

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