Around the time that Sprint Nextelspun off their landline division to form Embarq, Verizon and AT&T began work on their own IPTV services to compete with the localcable companies. Embarq was no different, and had started work on a similar service called Embarq TV. Details were scarce, but the service was rumored to have been an IPTV fiber-to-the-node service similar to AT&T's U-verse. The service was going through beta testing when CenturyTel agreed to purchase Embarq to form CenturyLink in 2009. CenturyLink began rolling out what was to eventually be known as Prism TV in October 2009 in Jefferson 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 to fiber-optic communication, eventually offering the service in markets in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, Washington, and Wisconsin. 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 a triple play option through CenturyLink with DirecTV. Some CenturyLink customers also had Dish Network as their TV provider through CenturyLink under a grandfather clause, as Dish was the legacy provider through CenturyTel and Embarq; CenturyLink switched to DirecTV as part of its acquisition of Qwest, who had partnered with DirecTV. As of January 2020, Prism TV is not being offered to new customers in all markets. Instead, CenturyLink is providing DirecTV for new customers.
Reception
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 receive satellite television combined with cord-cutting would ultimately help push pay TV prices lower. While CenturyLink has been slower to roll out Prism TV compared to Verizon 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. Verizon has in fact faced lawsuits from the citygovernments in New York City and Pittsburgh for failure to deploy Fios throughout their respective cities. 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.
