Qwest to turn up WiMAX, consumer VoIP

LAS VEGAS -- Qwest next year will roll out consumer VoIP nationwide and turn up a WiMAX wireless broadband service, according to CTO Balan Nair.

Nair spoke to Network World at this week's Telecom '05 conference here.

Qwest currently offers consumer VoIP in select cities in its 14-state territory. Next year's nationwide expansion will mirror what the carrier currently offers businesses with its OneFlex hosted and Integrated Access services.

"Once you build a product for business VoIP, VoIP is VoIP - it doesn't matter if it's consumer or business," Nair says.

The number of business VoIP users for Qwest's service is in the "five figures," Nair says, and Qwest logs 3 billion VoIP minutes per month across its backbone. He did not know the number of consumer users within Qwest's 14-state region.

For WiMAX, Qwest is currently conducting a trial in northern Denver but again Nair did not have figures on the number of trial customers. The service runs in the 3.5-GHz band of the radio spectrum.

Qwest is streaming video over the WiMAX network. Real-time video stretches the limits of the shared bandwidth architecture of WiMAX, he says.

"You need much better compression schemes to make real-time video work," Nair says.
In any event, "If you want to be in the consumer business, you've got to have video," he says. And Qwest does.

Unlike the other RBOCs, Qwest has been quiet on its video and its fiber-to-the-neighborhood/node/premises/curb activities. But the carrier offers Qwest Choice digital TV to 54,000 subscribers on its copper VDSL loops 4,000 feet from its fiber facilities.