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| Company type | Subsidiary/limited liability company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Pay television |
| Founded | January 5, 2011 (2011-01-05) |
| Founder | Lumen Technologies |
Area served | United States |
| Owner | Lumen Technologies |
| Website | www |
Prism TV is an AmericanIPTV service owned byLumen Technologies. It is based on the same technology as theU-verse service deployed byAT&T.[1]
Around the time thatSprint Nextel spun off their landline division to formEmbarq,Verizon, andAT&T began work on their own IPTV services to compete with the local cable companies.[citation needed] Embarq was no different, and had started work on a similar service called Embarq TV.[citation needed] Details were scarce, but the service was rumored to have been an IPTV fiber-to-the-node service similar to AT&T'sU-verse. The service was going throughbeta testing when CenturyTel agreed to purchase Embarq to form CenturyLink in 2009.[citation needed]
CenturyLink (still known as CenturyTel) began rolling out what was to eventually be known as Prism TV in October 2009 inJefferson City, Missouri. It adopted the Prism TV name in 2011, based on the Embarq TV infrastructure.
Over time, CenturyLink began rolling out Prism TV in markets as they were upgraded from the old copper-based services tofiber-optic communication, eventually offering the service in markets inArizona,[2]Colorado,[3][4]Florida,[5]Iowa,[6]Minnesota,[7]Missouri,[8]Nebraska,[9]Nevada,[10]North Carolina,[11]Oregon,[12]Washington,[13] andWisconsin.[14]
Other markets were to follow once their lines were upgraded to be able to carry Prism TV. In the interim, markets that did not offer Prism TV had atriple play option through CenturyLink withDirecTV. Some CenturyLink customers also hadDish Network as their TV provider through CenturyLink under agrandfather clause, as Dish was the legacy provider through CenturyTel and Embarq; CenturyLink switched to DirecTV as part of its acquisition ofQwest, who had partnered with DirecTV.[15]
In 2018, CenturyLink stopped offering Prism TV to new customers. Instead, CenturyLink it began promotingDirecTV for new customers.[16]
In late 2020, CenturyLink began the process of discontinuing Prism TV completely starting in Minnesota[17] and Nevada. As of March 2021, several other markets have stopped offering the service to all customers including Arizona,[18] Colorado, Washington, and parts of Florida.
Reception for Prism TV has been generally positive, with many observers feeling that giving consumers the option in areas where they might have been stuck with the local cable company if they weren't able to receivesatellite television (due to either technical reasons or not being allowed through their landlords if they rent their homes) combined withcord-cutting would ultimately help push pay TV prices lower.
While CenturyLink has been slower to roll out Prism TV compared toVerizon Fios and AT&T U-verse, it has gotten praise from some consumer advocate groups that they are at least putting forth the effort to upgrade their landlines and offer the service. Verizon, and to a lesser extent, AT&T, have both received criticism for all but abandoning their landline infrastructure to focus more on their wireless divisions, something CenturyLink doesn't offer on its own. (CenturyLink does offer bundling services forVerizon Wireless.) Verizon has in fact faced lawsuits from the city governments inNew York City andPittsburgh (both of which offer CenturyLink in parts of their suburban areas, though neither currently offer Prism TV) for failure to deploy Fios throughout their respective cities.[19] While AT&T has mostly deployed U-verse throughout its 21-state landline territory and has maintained its landlines, they have shown a lack of commitment on U-verse and plan on merging U-verse into DirecTV, which AT&T acquired in 2015.[20][21][22]
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