QUEBEC CITY – Cogeco Inc. CEO Louis Audet said Thursday that the time has come for the company’s cable division to revisit offering wireless service to its customers.
With EastLink and Access Communications selling Rogers Wireless service and with Videotron announcing this week that it will brand and sell its own service on the Rogers network, Audet was asked at the CIBC World Markets annual investors conference in Quebec City whether Cogeco was actively considering the service addition.
“We’ve looked at it twice already,” said Audet. “We had concluded this time that we would launch our voice over IP service, get it rolled out, see it to fruition and then we would turn our sights to the possibility of adding a fourth leg to our package and it’s about time now.
“The time has arrived for us to turn to that and start taking a look at it, and we will.”
On the voice over Internet protocol side of the business, Cogeco Digital Phone is now available to 28% of its customer base, with more to come, soon, said Audet.
While shying away from giving real numbers of subscribers, he called the company’s projection of having 7,000 to 8,000 VOIP customers by the end of 2005 too conservative. “We all know it will be better than that,” he said.
And as for the company’s prediction of 15% market penetration for the voice product in five years? “We know that’s too conservative and we’re working on it.”
The company’s voice service is available in Ontario in Burlington, Oakville and Windsor, and in Quebec in Trois Rivieres, Drummondville and St-Hyacinthe.
