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CenturyLink’s Prism TV
CenturyLink has stopped expanding its cable TV alternative Prism TV, and will no longer promote the service to its customers.
“Due to emerging market trends in video content and delivery, we do not plan to expand our Prism TV service offering,” CenturyLink spokesperson Francie Dudrey told Fierce Cable, in a statement delivered at the NAB Show yesterday. “We will continue to provide service and support to our current Prism TV subscribers and make the service available to qualified customers who request it in the markets where we currently offer Prism TV.”
As Stop the Cap! reported last month, CenturyLink is planning to pull back on residential broadband upgrades and services it was expecting to sell on its improved internet platform after the company announced senior management changes. One key sign CenturyLink was moving away from Prism TV was the sudden retirement of Duane Ring on March 30. Ring, a 34-year veteran at CenturyLink had been recently promoted to help oversee CenturyLink’s residential broadband upgrades and was instrumental to the launch of Prism TV in 2005.
Wall Street and activist shareholders had pushed CenturyLink hard to replace long time CEO Glen Post III, who had recently turned bullish on costly residential broadband upgrades. Post’s replacement, former Level 3 CEO Jeff Storey, wants to refocus CenturyLink on its more profitable commercial customers.
Ironically, Level 3 was acquired by CenturyLink in 2016. Now some of Level 3’s top executives will firmly control CenturyLink itself. Shareholder activists were pleased with CenturyLink’s new direction under Storey’s leadership, arguing CenturyLink shouldn’t be devoting significant resources or funding to its legacy phone and copper broadband businesses. CenturyLink will now move away from home broadband services and towards commercial and enterprise broadband, metro ethernet, and cloud/backup services. About two-thirds of CenturyLink customers are commercial enterprises.
CenturyLink will now promote DirecTV to its residential customers instead of Prism TV.
Longer term, a growing number of analysts suspect CenturyLink’s new management will want to sell off some or all of CenturyLink’s residential customers to refocus the business entirely on its commercial customers. The company refused to discuss that issue at this time. CenturyLink may find a difficult market for would-be buyers. Frontier Communications, a regular buyer of wireline assets, is itself mired in debt and financial difficulties.
Investors continue to be skeptical of the merits of costly network upgrades for the nation’s copper wire phone networks. In areas where fiber-enabled phone companies compete directly with cable, price wars can develop, reducing profits and the incentive to invest.
CenturyLink was the first ISP I used when I moved to Florida 3 years ago. When I asked for internet service I was very clear about a few things.. – I told them I wanted the fastest internet plan they had. (lol It was only 25 Mbps) – I told them I did not want a promotional price, I wanted the regular price to compare with other providers (I re-iterated this point several times and since I record phone calls, can prove it was no less than 5 times). – I asked them whether it was DSL (told them I… Read more »
Class action??
Do not even consider this company for your service provider, or you will forever regret it like I do. This started because Comcast’s promotional rates ended and they wouldn’t reinstate them, so in a huff I cancelled them and switched to Centurylink slow internet, after there sales people told me they were actually faster (Big Lie). Six months later my dish contract was up and I refused to pay the outrageous full price so like a fool I ordered Prism TV. This has been such a disappointment I wanted to cancel my service so walked into a Centurylink office, where… Read more »
God I dealt with them for 5 yrs, hideous customer service. They’re now moving all they’re customers to Direct Tv. I have nothing other then northern exposure, so satellite is ineffictive. Big surprise Prisim doubled my monthly cost simply because I could no capture northern exposure .Youll find some real pricks behind the scenes here. Just do yourself a favor, step away. It’s a team of grifters
I so agree. They couldn’t make Prisim a win so they sold out to DT. Losers. Worst customer service ever.