Verizon to reportedly launch its next-gen TV service this year

PanARMENIAN.Net - Verizon is quietly getting ready to launch its next-generation TV service in at least one of its Fios markets later this year, Variety reports citing multiple sources with knowledge of the company’s plans.

The service will be based on a new set-top box that incorporates some of the technology Verizon acquired from Intel a little over two years ago, and represents a bigger shift towards IP-based technology and a world where traditional pay TV isn’t the only game in town anymore.

Earlier this week, Verizon filed documents with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to get approval for a new “video set-top box.” Those documents included a mention of OnCue, the internet TV service that Intel developed years ago, only to sell it to Verizon before it ever launched. Variety has since learned that this new box, code-named “Mallard,” is the centerpiece of the company’s new TV service. The FCC documents were first reported by Light Reading.

The new device will offer pay-TV services with a new interface that won’t look at all like Verizon’s existing Fios TV service.

Moreover, it will also offer access to online video services, according to multiple sources. There’s no word yet on which services will be added, but Netflix would be a plausible candidate, as would a tight integration of online video programming developed at Verizon subsidiary AOL, Variety says.