TORONTO – For a short while on Thursday, it looked to some as though Bell Canada might be launching a Bell Fibe TV over-the-top virtual cable company, as an app on Apple TV.
A press release touting Bell Fibe TV as the first Canadian TV service available on Apple TV as an app made us think, for a moment, Bell was untethering its subscription TV service from its network, making the TV service available nationwide to anyone with an Apple TV box. That’s not the case however.
While Fibe TV is now available on Apple TV, it’s only for existing or new Bell customers who are also Apple fans, so that they can have their music, photos, games, favourite apps – and TV – all together in one place.
Customers who want to use the Fibe TV app still must have the Fibe TV set top box/DVR as their primary gateway to Fibe and then they can use their Apple TV box or boxes as a secondary device with the app, said Nicolas Poitras, vice-president of Bell Residential Service, in an interview.
“You need a Fibe TV subscription and right now that requires a Bell Fibe Internet service (with unlimited Internet) and a Bell Fibe TV service, so once you’ve got those two things, you can use Apple TV to access our services,” he explained. “Apple TV will be a great secondary device.”
Customers can watch live TV and access on-demand titles through the Fibe app and fourth-generation Apple TV box on any of their Apple smart phones or tablets, too. Before the end of the year, Bell will allow customers to watch shows recorded on the main DVR – with full pause, rewind and fast-forward capabilities. Customers can also use the app to see trending shows, set recordings and some limited Siri functionality (“Siri, find me Big Bang Theory”) is coming, too. However, Bell’s re-start feature, where viewers can join a show already in progress and start over at the beginning, is not yet ready to be used via the app and won’t be until some time in 2017.
When asked whether or not Bell considered making a Fibe TV subscription a completely stand alone app in the Apple world available to all Canadians regardless of their broadband provider, which could perhaps pull in more paying customers who are cord-cutters or cord-nevers who watch YouTube, Netflix and other content through their Apple TV and broadband connection only, Poitras said it’s not something customers are asking for, nor is the company ready for.
(Ed note: There would be some significant technical, copyright and regulatory hurdles in the way of that, too.)
“Apple TV will be a great secondary device.” – Nicolas Poitras, Bell Canada
“At this point in time, we feel as though consumers do want a full fledged service,” he added, noting that as long as Fibe TV is being run by Bell on the Bell network, the company can guarantee quality of signal – something it can’t do if the video were just riding over the open internet.
Poitras would not comment on how many of its Fibe TV customers they believe have an Apple TV device or if the company is working on an app for other environments such as Roku or PlayStation. “The Apple TV as a box is definitely the most widespread in Canada,” he said. “Its CPU power really allows us to bring the Fibe TV presence to a whole new level.
“We think there is a lot we can do with Apple and they’re the partner we are focused on now,” he added.
“We think anyone who has an Apple TV will seriously consider Fibe simply because they are avid users of Apple products and use them a lot and if they can expand the amount of content that’s accessible on their box, we think there’s a large number of people who will be interested in that… Apple fans are quite loyal to the brand.”
The Fibe app on Apple TV is also only available to Bell customers in Ontario and Quebec and will come to Bell's Atlantic region next eyar.
