YOUR ARTICLE TODAY ON THEFT IS INTERESTING… on two levels. One because it underscores sadly the difficulty our industry has with people who see nothing wrong with “stealing” intellectual property (in our case television programming).
The second interesting aspect is that even an industry critic and a knowledgeable observer like you does not believe the extent of use of hacked DTH equipment on a national scale.
We very carefully surveyed our licensed area at Mountain Cablevision in 2002. We hired a third party to “count” dishes. What we assumed from an anecdotal drive-around was verified by that count. In fact, we hired the same firm to recount the same area in November of that year to see what movement had occurred from the original count in April of that year.
The bottom line Greg is that in our small system (we represent about one-half of one percent of Canada’s cabled homes) we know there were and are about 7,000 homes with black market equipment mounted and visible. In today’s environment – many of those devices are crippled by new security methods.
My point is, 7,000 is an astonishing number in an area of some 50,000 homes. Even allowing for some intensity due to our closeness to the 49th parallel, extrapolation to a national number leads to some very big figures.
Patrick Kiely, C.A.
Director, Business Operations and Development
Mountain Cablevision Limited
Hamilton, Ontario
