TORONTO – Canadian telephone companies long sought a way to deliver a TV experience to their customers.
Bell Canada opted early on for a satellite solution, having come to realize during many technical trials during the 1990s that delivering a quality TV experience on par with what cable could offer was still years away.
Other Canadian telcos continued to test the delivery of digital television signals using various technological options through the 1990s and early 2000s. Cost, inefficient compression technology, and the physical limitations of the telco plant all held back viable solutions to the telephone company’s missing link when it came to the home bundle: television.
Now, however, it’s estimated about 750,000 Canadians subscribe to a wired TV service from their telephone company, whether it’s Telus or Bell, SaskTel or MTS, Tbaytel or Bruce Telecom. Some of those operators were in Toronto Monday for an afternoon conference (and subsequent meetings with programmers and other suppliers) to toot their own horns a little bit and outline their ongoing growth and other initiatives in their communities.
Tbaytel, the municipal-owned telco that serves the people of Thunder Bay but whose wired and wireless networks cover about 300,000 square kilometres of Northwestern Ontario, launched digital TV using the Microsoft Mediaroom platform (the platform nearly all telco TV companies have deployed) in the fall of 2010.
Since then, the company’s Sara Mason told meeting delegates, “it’s been a little bit of a roller coaster ride.” The company has yet to hit the 10,000 subscriber mark (Shaw Cable has about 60,000 in the region, Bell Satellite TV about 20,000), but has seen an uptick in growth recently.
While an offer of a new PVR for $299 was an effective way to start the soft launch last fall, the company found out quickly that people don’t mind change, as long as it doesn’t cost them anything. “The consensus (among customers) was ‘I want everything but I don’t want to spend any money’,” said Mason.
So, in the spring, Tbaytel cut prices and saw growth rise – so much in fact that Shaw also dropped its pricing in the region. “It felt pretty good to intimidate the big guys a little bit,” she said of the market reaction.
Now, the company is pushing a whole-home bundle of TV, telephone, high speed internet, wireless and home security, which includes a free HD PVR, three months of free high speed internet and other promotions. “And we’ve had explosive growth over the past couple of months,” added Mason.
“When people hear that they always say, ‘yeah, but it’s Thunder Bay,’ so (growth) is all relative… It’s kind of like when I hear people from Toronto saying ‘it’s cold outside’,” she added, to a good laugh.
Next up for Tbaytel is an expansion of its VOD library, the addition of pay-per-view and fibre to the home trials.
AS THE FLOODWATERS OF southern Manitoba rose, MTS used its flexible TV system to create Flood Watch 2011, a mix of technology (including some from Markham’s Capital Networks), media, corporate and community co-operation that helped Manitobans stay informed about what were unprecedented water levels threatening nearly everyone.
MTS partnered with the Winnipeg Free Press, the Brandon Sun, the CBC and even Brandon radio station CKLQ (which is owned by cable competitor Westman Communications) to try and provide as much up to the minute data as it could on the ever-changing flood situation.
While MTS used the newspapers and radio stations for content, it installed eight cameras in flooded or about-to-be-flooded areas that were live-linked on the web.
However, MTS Ultimate TV customers were able to view it on their televisions as well. With the system’s “Ultimate Picks” channel, customers were able to view six simultaneous screens (something they can do any time on this channel, but was set to monitor the spring flooding back in April).
“This ran for six weeks and was very well received by our customers,” said MTS’s Greg McLaren.
BY FAR, THE FASTEST-growing hit among western Canadian TV consumers is Telus’ Optik TV.
The company’s director of marketing, Rob Sims, told delegates that with 403,000 subscribers at the end of the second quarter (June), that’s an annual growth rate of 77%, and it’s not slowing down.
The company also launched Facebook integration with its TV service in March, pushed out a PVR-space viewing app, is working on the launch of a music room app with Galaxie, and will soon add many more VOD hours to its library.
And so far, its customers are really good ones, heavy on the ARPU, who want a lot more than just the basics. “Over 80% of our customers take more than ‘the essentials’,” he said. More than half subscribe to six or more theme packages.
Sims also carried a message for programmers, asking them for help driving growth of Optik TV with initiatives such as: extended free previews for up-sell campaigns; quick approval of content imagery for customer communication and advertising; training visits to educate the sales channel; co-op dollars for up-sell and acquisition campaigns; and, to include Telus when programmers advertise on their own.
Telus has about 1,000 reps who are all tasked with selling TV content and they need all the help they can get from those who own that content, added Sims.
Telco TV subscriber levels in Canada (approximate):
Optik TV (Telus) – 400,000
MTS TV – 100,000
Max TV (SaskTel) – 90,000
Fibe TV (Bell) – 80,000 (approximate, based on several sources)
Bell Aliant TV – 30,000 (approximate, based on several sources)
Other independent telcos (Tbaytel, Bruce Telecom, Mornington, etc) – ~20,000
Total: 720,000
Top 10 Canadian TV distributors:
Shaw Communications – 3.3 million
Rogers Cable – 2.3 million
Bell TV – 2.0 million
Videotron – 1.5 million
Cogeco Cable – 875,000
EastLink – ~500,000
Telus – 403,000
MTS TV – 100,000
SaskTel – 90,000
Access Communications – ~85,000
Total: 11.15 million
