MONTREAL – Both CEO Michael Sabia and COO George Cope remained true to their answers throughout 2006 when it comes to Bell Canada’s network capacity and the launch of IPTV.
In short, despite some evidence to the contrary (like Verizon’s $20 billion spend on fibre to the home), the company believes its fibre to the node network upgrade strategy will serve it just fine when it launches IPTV. And when will that be? Could be next week. Could be next year.
"We continue to believe that (FTTN) is the right way to go," said Sabia in a conference call with financial analysts on Wednesday.
The issue, he said, is not raw bandwidth like the 100Mbps Videotron is now working on but instead, it’s about "bandwidth that has real value to the customer.
"We’re very comfortable with our ability to deliver utilizable, valuable bandwidth to our customers and – on that basis to also deliver, by monetizing the value of that bandwidth – to deliver value to our shareholders as well," said Sabia.
As for any IPTV dates or a timeline on when its primary software partner, Microsoft, will have the next generation of IPTV ready for deployment?
"Our intention is to continue working with Microsoft as they roll out not just the current version of IPTV that they have with some other carriers, but also the next iteration of that product that they will be rolling out relatively soon," said Sabia.
Its functionality and content richness will be far superior to that of cable, he added. "It will be a different kind of video product than the market has ever seen before."
"We’ve not given any launch dates for IPTV," added Cope during a media conference call. Bell wants to enter the market with a high level of technological stability and service difference because when it does have a digital terrestrial TV service to sell, it will be targeting its high-value customers, a demographic they don’t want to anger.
"It’ll launch in this organization when we’re convinced we’ve got product at the level we want to have it at and that we’re prepared to execute," added Cope.
