MONTREAL – Quebecor Media’s cable company Videotron was the first large Canadian MSO to offer voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) service to its customers and it is the first one to count half a million telephone subscribers.
"Thanks to Videotron’s cable telephone service, 500,000 clients can now communicate among themselves for free, from one end of the province to the other," boasts the press release. Videotron offers free long-distance calls between subscribers to its residential telephone service.
"Videotron is aware that the more households it offers services to, the more it stimulates market competition," said company president and CEO Robert Dépatie. And, according to a 2007 survey conducted last March by Léger Marketing, "our client satisfaction rating for this product increased to 96%. This high customer satisfaction is related to the fact that a large number of consumers were looking for a reliable alternative to traditional telephone service," he added.
Since launch in 2005, the company has added numerous service bundles, encouraging customers to take as many communications services from the company as possible. It even added wireless to the mix in 2006.
Videotron chose Montreal’s South Shore for the initial launch of its new service, and gradually expanded its service to include Laval, Québec, Montreal, Montréal’s North Shore, Saguenay, Gatineau and Sherbrooke regions. Videotron’s cable telephone service is now available in all of the large urban centres located in the areas served by the company, and now covers more than 83% of this territory.
While over the past two years Videotron has concentrated on introducing and managing the growth of its VOIP service, this year the company will turn its attention to new applications. Subscribers will soon be able to take advantage of the soft phone telephone service, allowing them to better manage their calls and all their communications, including video phone service in the near future, says the press release.
The lucky 500,000th customer – from the Montreal South Shore – has won a free, one-year subscription that includes voice mail, e-mail voice mail, call waiting, call display conference calls and call forwarding.
