MILVERTON, Ont. – When we writers offer up a dateline, or placeline to begin a story, like the one here that denotes the little town west of Kitchener I visited last fall, often it comes without naming the province of origin.
The theory is that most people know where Toronto, or Vancouver, or Montreal or Calgary is. There’s no need to add, Ont., or B.C., or Que., or Alta. to the town name. But when it comes to places like Milverton, Zurich, Kirkton, Kippen, Inwood, or Ripley, we just have to add the “Ont.” tag to them.
Now, that’s not to say these little towns are somewhere hidden, or so far off the beaten track that it would be hard to get there. In fact, driving to each of them from Toronto would take about as long as some take to commute to their cottages on the weekends (it’s just a much prettier, far easier drive than the traffic-choked Hwy 400 or 404 is all).
The reason why we’ve singled out these communities and their surrounding areas is that each is home to a local telecom operator – progressive co-operatives (meaning they’re owned by their members/customers) now offering the complete bundle of telecom and entertainment services. Mornington Communications (Milverton), Hay Communications (Zurich), Quadro Communications (Kirkton), Tuckersmith Communications (Kippen), Brooke Telecom (Inwood), and Hurontel (Ripley) have all offered traditional telecom service and high speed Internet service for a while, but each have also recently added wireless phone service and as of last fall, digital television.
There are other small, independent telcos, too across the country, but a few years ago these six decided to pool their resources (and about 20,000 subscribers) to launch cellular service – and advanced TV services (like 20-plus HD channels, including some I don’t get – but want – from my “big city” cable operator). All plan to launch video on demand soon, too.
And they reach a decidedly different demographic than the urban operators. But that doesn’t mean those folks don’t want the same type of connectivity that can be found among the skyscrapers. Just look at the Brooke Telecom web site. While pitching its quad-play, the primary image on the site is a field being ploughed as it wishes “Our Farmers A Safe Planting Season”. Can anyone imagine the Rogers Communications web site offering up such a sentiment to its agrarian demo??
While Quadro took the lead in launching wireless service in 2007, last year Mornington was the first out of the gate with IPTV. For a 90-year old telco, this wasn’t an easy thing, said general manager Richard Banks. In-home wiring and other last mile challenges – not to mention supplier gear alterations (MPEG2 to MPEG4 upgrades, for example) were the typical hurdles that had to be overcome during last year’s launch as the telco found out the havoc household appliances can wreak on a video signal, for example.
The company hooks up its customers any way it can, using new cat 5 or Ethernet cable, coax, and for the high speed internet service, wireless or via the home’s electrical wiring, said Banks, who adds he’s pleased with overall uptake of the TV service, but declined to divulge customer figures.
And any new regions the company pushes into ,however? Just fibre, says the GM. “We will not put copper into any new places we go into at all,” he says. In fact, Mornington is running fibre to the home in a small, new subdivision in its territory.
But why do all this, especially in the face of far larger competitors with far more resources? Banks declined to discuss the amount of money his company or the other co-ops are spending on IPTV, but it ain’t cheap. Banks’ answer? They are a locally-focused business which sees the bigger picture. The big guys do offer scale and low prices but Mornington is competitive (phone, Internet and TV for $99.95 a month) and they know their customers – they live right next door, literally.
“Convergence is the big answer,” he says. “Bundling. Our customers are seeing all of those advertisements on television that talk about bundling – and, we know that as a competitor there’s no reason why anyone else couldn’t come in here.”
But we had to ask the bigger picture question, too: Why (and independent cable companies get asked this all the time as well), in an age of mergers and acquisitions and the assumption among many that bigger is better when it comes to TV and telecom, do these companies continue to thrive? Shouldn’t they have sold already?
“A lot of people that ask us that. And I would say that we exist because our customers want us to exist. And, the moment in time when our customers don’t see the value in having a local company, we won’t exist,” explains Banks. “So, we have to make sure that we continue to provide value, and we do in a lot of ways, but I’ve had some interesting conversations with people that I’m friends with that don’t see the co-operative value. They’re still just looking at price and performance.
“Those things are nice to have, but if somebody had better pricing and better performance, consistently better performance, I think a lot of people wouldn’t hesitate to move.”
But they don’t, for the most part. That’s not to say there aren’t a lot of satellite dishes in the region, but Mornington serves about 5,000 customers in total (it’s also an ILEC in nearby Stratford) and Banks sees a bright future for his small company offering converged services.
After all, when something goes wrong, he hears about it at restaurants, shopping, wherever. The company has 15 employees so there isn’t much separation between Banks and his customers.
“We have to make sure that we do quality work as well because if a relative of ours comes to the front counter looking for service, it’s going to be hard for you to tell them ‘Hey, this is the greatest thing since sliced bread’ if you have a service issue, right?” notes Banks.
“So, it drives all of us to make sure that there are not problems with things because I get stopped in the street. People say, ‘Hey, channel 11 doesn’t look right’ or whatever, and: ‘When will that be fixed?’ And I have to know that channel 11 is pixellated. People tell me that. They’re very good about it.
“In fact, I think we’re held to a higher level of service because of the fact of where we are and how close we are to our customers… people would rather deal with us if they can.”
