Prediction: Shaw Internet customers will really like this
By Greg O’Brien
CALGARY — In a move the company says is meant to reward its wired broadband customers while building its wireless subscriber count out west, Shaw Communications is launching today its new Shaw Mobile branded service.
Exclusive to British Columbia and Alberta, Shaw Mobile is meant to leverage the company’s LTE network, its Fibre+ network and 450,000 Wi-Fi hotspots to offer Shaw Internet customers a way to add wireless that promises to dramatically reduce their monthly wireless data bill.
Beginning today, Shaw Fibre+ Internet subscribers can add up to six wireless lines of unlimited nationwide text and talk for $0 per month. Shaw’s broadband customers can also sign up for Shaw Mobile’s Unlimited Data plan which includes 25 GB/month on Shaw’s LTE network for only $45 per month, with $10/mo. U.S. and Mexico roaming options. Beyond this, customers can choose to top up their data one gigabyte at a time or have access to unlimited data at reduced speeds. Data is unlimited but speeds are slowed if customers surpass the 25 GB limit and the brand is not available as a stand alone service.
The company also launched a By-the-Gig option which starts at $10 per GB. By the Gig customers have the benefit of unused data automatically rolling over for up to 90 days.
UPDATE: Shaw Mobile customers have to be Shaw Fibre+ internet customers to get the above prices. Non wired customers, according to the 
company website but not mentioned in the press materials, can get the 25 GB plan for $85 at launch and the By-the-Gig plan for $15. A prior version of this story said Shaw Mobile was not available to users who aren’t also wired customers, which Cartt.ca believed was the case after the press briefing. We missed the line in the press release which stated: “Shaw Mobile is also available as a standalone product at market rate.” We regret the error, but pictured are the rates for non-broadband subscribers.
“The first and most important thing that you want to accomplish with Shaw Mobile is to reward and secure our existing base,” said company president Paul McAleese in a conference call with reporters on Wednesday afternoon. “We want to ensure we reward our customers in a way that perhaps is difficult for others to do, and stabilize that base in a way that can reduce our churn and reward those customers for their loyalty.”
While Telus will be able to respond, but not in the same way because it does not have a Wi-Fi network the way Shaw does, neither Bell nor Rogers will be able to offer such a home broadband-wireless bundle in Western Canada. Shaw, through its Freedom brand, so far has just 6% of the wireless market in the west, said McAleese. This new plan seems sure to improve that number.
Shaw Mobile is designed around the trend that Canadians are increasingly choosing to reduce monthly wireless costs by using their smartphones on Wi-Fi rather than using cellular data. Right now the company is seeing customers drive 80-90% of the data going through their phone over Wi-Fi and this trend has become more prevalent recently with the movement toward working from home thanks to the Covid-19 crisis. Plus, the Western Canadian economy, thanks to very low oil prices, is suffering right now, making this the perfect time to launch, added McAleese.
“This is the right time for us to move this into the market and enable customers to right-size their wireless pricing.” – Paul McAleese, Shaw Communications
“What better time to launch a high value plan than when people are most financially stressed. We think we can really help Canadian consumers… This is the right time for us to move this into the market and enable customers to right-size their wireless pricing in a way that can just take a little bit of the burden off their household, and make things a little bit easier for them.”
Shaw Mobile customers can leverage the Wi-Fi connectivity that comes with their home Fibre+ Internet plan while on the go because their device will automatically connect to any of Shaw’s Wi-Fi hotspots. Shaw is unique among Canadian operators in building such a large number of Wi-Fi hotspots.
This means when customers aren’t on Wi-Fi, they pay only for the data they use while connect to Shaw’s LTE network or to any of Shaw’s roaming partners’ networks nationwide. “In a market where there are still metered LTE data, consumers hunt for Wi-Fi and work hard to get it,” added McAleese. “We want customers to feel good about using their devices. We think that they’re going to have a best-connected experience and a lowest cost possibility.”
For what it’s worth, if this package was available in Ontario at the Cartt.ca home office, we could save approximately $720/year off our existing two-line 10GB unlimited wireless plan, for more than double the amount of data before speeds are slowed. This type of deep discount seems to run counter to what McAleese said last month when he declared other wireless providers were showing a lack of pricing discipline.
“You’re seeing ever escalating buckets of data included across the country from our competition,” he explained. “We wanted to be able to be slightly ahead of that, so I think we’re anchoring smartly in a bucket size that will continue to put us in a leadership position for the market.
“It is not our objective to destabilize the wireless market in Western Canada with this pricing,” McAleese continued during the call, adding this new launch is simply “introductory pricing. It will be with us for a number of months, but it may not be permanent pricing, like anything else. We will be very thoughtful about making sure that we have a thoughtful, stable approach to the marketplace. We’ve been very rational competitors in wireless with the Freedom brand over the last number of years, we’ll continue to be rational and thoughtful on the Shaw Mobile brand in the coming months and years as well.”
(Ed note: All of the Big Three have promotions on right now offering 20 GB of data, but for $80/month and in the spring some were offering that amount of data for $65).
We’ll get to see just how rational Shaw’s primary Western competitor thinks the new plans are when Telus releases its second quarter results on Friday and faces what we assume will be a pretty inquisitive panel of financial analysts on its quarterly conference call.
“We have developed a brilliant piece of engineering that is going to provide Canadian consumers with the ability to cost manage their data traffic across the course of our networks in Western Canada.” – McAleese
At least one of those analysts this week delivered a note to investors outlining the risks and rewards at play (even though he wrote and sent out the note only having seen the tweet pre-announcing the Shaw Mobile launch).
“If we were to assume that 75% of the Freedom subscribers in western Canada use Shaw versus Telus for their residential services (it could be closer to 50/50, but we will assume that households that like Telus as a wireline service provider probably skew more towards Telus for wireless as well), then approximately 410k of Shaw’s ~2.1 million Internet customers would already have a Shaw bundle without even knowing it,” wrote Vince Valentini of TD Securities. “That would leave about 80% of Shaw’s Internet subscribers (almost 1.7 million) as a target market for cross promotion and bundling with Shaw Mobile.
“Consequently, if Shaw were to pursue aggressive bundled discounts for wireless to existing cable/Internet customers, then there could be a lot of market share at risk for the three incumbent carriers. For perspective, a 25% success rate by Shaw in adding just one wireless subscription in each of these ~1.7 million homes/businesses would more than double the 410k wireless subs that we estimate it has currently in AB/BC. Furthermore, if Shaw chooses to use big bundled discounts, then it might also be able to win incremental video/Internet/phone market share from Telus,” he wrote.
“By leveraging Wi-Fi powered by Shaw’s Fibre+ network rather than LTE data, many Shaw Mobile customers can realisti
Shaw president Paul McAleese took reporters on a virtual tour of the company’s new store in Calgary’s Market Mall. Photo courtesy of Shaw by Jeff McIntosh.
cally eliminate much of their monthly wireless data expense. It’s 2020 and Canadians expect to be connected all the time wherever they are. With Shaw Mobile, that doesn’t have to mean large wireless data charges,” said Brad Shaw, CEO of Shaw Communications, in company’s Thursday morning news release.
For now, customers will have to go to a Shaw store (or one of its retail partners such as Wal-Mart and Loblaws) to make sure they get a Shaw SIM card and that their phones, whether they bring their own or buy one from Shaw (it is launching with the iPhone 11 series, too) are properly set up to automatically connect to the Wi-Fi zones. “We have developed a brilliant piece of engineering that is going to provide Canadian consumers with the ability to cost manage their data traffic across the course of our networks in Western Canada,” explained McAleese.
The company is also using its Shaw Mobile launch to refresh its corporate brand (while also overhauling its stores and opening new ones) and added it has spent $30 billion since fiscal 2013 to build, upgrade and expand its networks and services.
Shaw Mobile is available across B.C. and Alberta in 19 Shaw retail stores, including 12 new stores opening in the coming weeks, and more than 120 locations of Shaw’s largest national retail partners across the two provinces.
While McAleese re-iterated on the call Shaw Mobile will be restricted to its wired subscribers in Alberta and B.C., it may well roll it out to other of its wired regions, such as Saskatoon and Winnipeg, but that won’t happen for a while. McAleese also said the company will begin marketing Shaw Mobile to its wired small and medium business customers by the end of this calendar year or early 2021.
More information about Shaw Mobile’s new plans can be found at www.shawmobile.ca/plans. Information about compatible handsets is available at www.shawmobile.ca/devices.
