VANCOUVER – With its labour woes (hopefully) finally behind the company, Telus CEO Darren Entwistle said Thursday the company is moving quickly on two new technologies: its new wireless EVDO network, and its digital television solution, Telus TV.
During a quarterly conference call with financial analysts, Entwistle said beginning next week, Telus will launch its EVDO (Evolution Data Optimized) high speed wireless network in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto and Montreal. The new net will allow wireless data speeds of more than 700 Kbps, about six times faster than its current offering.
And launching this month, is Telus TV, its digital television answer to Shaw Cablesystems’ recent push into the telco’s traditional market, voice. “Telus TV is ready to move beyond the trial phase,” he said, confirming what was becoming a pretty poorly-kept secret.
It won’t be a huge launch however, as the company will begin by rolling it out neighbourhood by neighbourhood in Calgary and Edmonton, said Entwistle.
The IPTV service will launch delivering about 8 Mbps to the home to start with, explained Entwistle, “which is sufficient to deliver a payload of high speed Internet, security applications, as well as television,” he said.
It’s not good enough, however, to deliver HDTV, which he then addressed.
But, that ability is coming. “Those customers who are closer to our central offices where we have a shorter loop length, we can get payloads of up to 10 Mbps,” he explained. Telus “is in the process of delivering” ADSL 2+, added Entwistle, which is a faster ADSL which can boost it to 15 Mbps.
“We’re also exploring going to ADSL 2+ bonded” continued the CEO, “making use of multiple pairs within the home which can allow us to double the bandwidth… to 30 Mbps.”
Then, “over the next two or three years, we will be significantly upgrading our access infrastructure, pushing fibre deeper into our access layer to the curbside cabinet within neighbourhoods and then going to what we call a GPON (Gigabit Passive Optical Network) solution which is a combination of an optical topology with an Ethernet connection into the household that would allow us to deliver 100 Mbps,” said Entwistle.
Don’t look for Telus TV to be a discount service, however (Entwistle used words like “judicious” and “conservative” when describing pricing strategy) The business plan is built on differentiation where Telus will carry channels Shaw has chosen not to. “On top of that, we will be bringing forward a service with pure video on demand where people can rent their movies at any time they like, rather than on a fixed half-hour allocation.”
As for the third quarter, ended September 30th, strong wireless growth drove the company’s revenue and income. Wireless revenue and EBITDA increased 16% (to $864 million) and 28% (to $414 million), respectively, compared to the third quarter of 2004.
ARPU (average revenue per subscriber unit) increased by $2 to $64 driven by higher voice and data usage.
On the wired side, the number of customers switching to Shaw Digital Phone or other voice providers led to flat revenue of $1.2 billion in the third quarter of 2005 and EBITDA fell 14% or $68 million in the quarter to $426 million. However, the company attributed the EBITDA hit to its four-month strike.
Network access lines of 4.7 million showed a declined 108,000 or 2.2% from a year ago. Cash flow (EBITDA less capital expenditures) decreased by 10% to $250 million in the third quarter, compared to the same period a year ago.
For the full release, go to www.telus.com.
