CALGARY – The announcement yesterday that Shaw Communications plans to roll out U.S. cable giant Comcast’s X1 platform shows how the company is continuing an extensive internal makeover.
Last quarter, it told analysts it was moving away from bundling home phone in with all of its products because it no longer makes business sense and wasn’t particularly customer-friendly. Shortly before that, it restructured its TV business to move away from old silos and towards thinking more completely like a digital media company.
This quarter, during its Q3 conference call, the company told financial analysts that – as big as it is in Canada – it can’t keep up with global technology advances and is looking to cast it’s lot with Comcast. “Scale is a key factor in our business, especially as we enter the world of next generation video,” said company CEO Brad Shaw. “We are excited to announce we’re working closely with Comcast to begin a technical trial on their cloud based X1 platform. Shaw is the first in Canada to capitalize on Comcast’s cloud technology, offering consumers a seamless experience across multiple screens and devices, both in and out of home.”
While it’s just a technical trial now, it’s clear Shaw wants to roll this advanced platform out to its customers. (Ed note: It’s pretty nifty, we’ve seen it in action Stateside and it will raise Shaw’s video offerings to something that competes strongly with the more user-friendly and flexible Telus OptikTV.)
“We used to be an engineering-driven company that built stuff,” added Shaw, “and we’re not that anymore. We’re now a customer-centric organization defined by customer experiences.” The company had been attempting to go it alone on an IPTV project, but it has abandoned that for X1.
“When you look at it, the Internet has changed everything in this new world and we need scale – so we’re committed to getting scale through industry solutions that are partner-led, and (the technical partnership with) Comcast is an example of that strategy,” Shaw continued. “As we go forward over the next year, you’re going to see a variety of announcements from us that prove that this relationship is the right… direction for this company.”
Shaw COO Jay Mehr added during the conference call that Shaw’s own back office systems either can, or will soon be able to, handle the X1 integration, which he defined as “complex.”
“It’s hard to imagine that we could have done something like this on our own, like our first effort in this area,” said Mehr. “So we don’t underestimate the challenge, but we’re really excited about the opportunity to create a differentiated video product that has many layers.”
As for the costs of doing this rollout, assuming the trial goes well, Mehr is optimistic. “We’ve embraced the set top box strategy of Comcast and because we’re launching only boxes that are the same as Comcast has, we’ve achieved just over 40% savings in our CPE equipment going forward,” he added.
“In addition to that, the technical trial and presumably the ultimate architecture will strongly leverage Comcast’s video cloud and therefore not require us to duplicate that in Canada.”
