TORONTO –
Whether it’s true IPTV or a version of DSL doesn’t really matter and in a Canadian context anyway, that’s a significant number (right around the total number of people living in Windsor, Ont.). And they are building, experimenting and taking customers away from their primary competitors, cable.
This week in Toronto, a number of the traditional telecom companies which are now offering TV are meeting with the various programmers in Canada and from the States to talk about their expansion plans (more regions, more customers, more channels).
Most are adding channels and capabilities. Some are newer and serve a few hundred customers, such as the Southwestern Ontario telecom independents (Mornington, Hay, Quadro, Tuckersmith, Brooketel, Hurontel, Bruce, Wightman, others tens of thousands, such as Telus, MTS, SaskTel and Bell Aliant.
No longer are these companies limited by their networks as to what they offer. Bell Aliant, for example, offers customers well over 200 channels, 45 of which are high definition. It also makes available something it calls “the listening room”, a feature which customers can personalize their audio experience, even including local radio stations.
But with no video on demand as yet, Bell Aliant offers a very cheap initial offer of 150 channels for just $34 a month, hitting its cable competitors (EastLink in Halifax, Rogers in Saint John Fredericton, Moncton, and St. John’s) hard on price. Bell Aliant TV is not available beyond those cities as yet, nor in its vast traditional telecom regions, 2.5 million households spread over 1.5 million square kilometres spanning rural Quebec and Ontario.
Thus far, the company has about 30,000 digital television customers.
On a different end of the spectrum are the small, independent telcos which have launched digital TV in southwestern Ontario. Between them all, they have close to 5,000 customers (about a 21% penetration rate). Because of their small size, they had to work together to get their TV product off the ground, said Tuckersmith Communications’ Dani Gall.
The companies share a fibre ring through the region and was pushed into television because their local cable operators have all launched phone service. But for such small companies used to providing traditional phone service, “It was a daunting project,” said Gall.
The companies visited SaskTel to see that company’s successful Max product in action (SaskTel has about 75,000 subs in its home province) but despite the fact TV service is real among the tiny telcos (there are headends at Wightman, Bruce and Mornington), “a major hurdle that has hurt us has been our inability to attain channel carriage,” said Mornington’s Andrew Mustard. Some services either don’t believe it’s a real service, or don’t want to bother with the small companies, he added, pointing the finger primarily at some U.S. services.
“The cost for us to deploy was and is a great barrier,” added Bruce Telecom’s Gary McGillivray. “We are a very small fish in a very big pond,” where high end encoders, for example, are almost out of reach on the cost side,” he added.
And because TV is a mature market and its demographic is somewhat older than the larger, urban centres, Bruce and its telco TV compatriots “have to deliver real savings each month,” if they are going to lure customers, added McGillivray. Bruce’s opening offer is $39.95 for 77 channels.
While being small means the companies can react quickly and stay close to customers, that size means they are at the mercy of their suppliers sometimes, too. “Our middleware and set top box combinations have changed” several times, said Hay Communications’ Kelli Phillips.
At MTS, which can boast about 85,000 TV subs, it had to alter its service completely when Motorola could no longer make the particular set top box it had been deploying from day one, said the company’s TV manager, Greg McLaren.
The company now offers a residential gateway for its new “Ultimate” service (running Windows Media Room) which this week launched a whole home PVR option, too, something its terrestrial competition (Shaw Cable) does not have. MTS also offers VOD and has its own popular on demand community channel, Winnipeg On Demand.
On demand is a popular feature, added SaskTel’s Andrea Kelly. The company is logging about 172,000 DVR recordings per week and 59,000 VOD buys per month (real buys, too, not the SVOD or free OD content). And in the first week of launch, with just 10 titles, the company served up 900 HD VOD buys recently. “We have a bit of a captive audience for six months of the year in Saskatchewan,” she said.
While Telus has signed a deal with Bell to re-sell satellite TV in Alberta and B.C., it now has close to 120,000 terrestrial TV subscribers, more than double 2008’s YTD total. And after noting that 85% of customers take more than just basic, he added: “It’s just amazing TV.
