TORONTO – Canada’s telco TV providers say that they are getting better and better at eating their cable competitors’ lunch, so to speak. And, they have no intention of easing up any time soon.
Bell Aliant, MTS, SaskTel and Telus met with broadcasters and content providers this week in Toronto to chat about their successes and plans for the future. And, they introduced a new member of their informal consortium, TbayTel, who recently began offering digital TV in Thunder Bay, ON.
The majority of the telcos extolled the virtues of their Microsoft Mediaroom platform, particularly how it allows them to offer functionality that customers want, and that their competitors are currently unable to offer.
“Going to Mediaroom really allowed us to take advantage of some of the platform’s features, which allows customers to take control of their entertainment experience”, said Rob Sims, director of TV marketing for Telus. “We want to be seen at the top of the entertainment chain. People know Telus as a communication and information company, and we really want to start to own the entertainment space as well.”
Sims said that his company had 228,000 television subscribers, (combined IPTV and satellite), as of June, and that it will be rolling out its OptikTV service in its ILEC region in eastern Quebec within the next few weeks.
Tim Reid, TV team lead for Bell Aliant, shared some of the improvements that his company has made over the last year. They included adding more channels, including HD, premium sports and adult content, plus francophone HD channels in order to appeal to the bilingual markets in New Brunswick. Enhanced middleware also helped the company to improve its PVR and remote functionality, and it also tweaked its packaging and pricing in an effort to “close the product gaps” relative to its cable competitors, Rogers and EastLink, he said.
But the company is very is focused on expanding its IPTV footprint through its fibre-to-the-home network FibreOp. The network now covers approximately 300,000 homes in six cities in Eastern Canada, with plans to expand to 10 cities and 600,000 homes by the end of 2012.
“FibreOp, which theoretically gives us unlimited bandwidth to the home, allows us to expand the number of HD streams that we can take in to the home and not worry about constraining our bandwidth on the Internet side”, Reid continued. “At the end of the day, this is what puts us at an advantage to cable, not just on the TV side, but on the Internet side, too.”
SaskTel said that it now has 80,000 + subscribers to its Max Entertainment Services, with a footprint of approximately 240,000. Andrea Kelly, content and alliances director, content management, said that 50% of its subscribers have signed up for its HD services, while 30% of its existing customers use its PVR (which it calls a DTVR).
Looking ahead, Kelly said the company plans to expand in to eight more communities next year, which will add approximately 30,000 more homes to its footprint. She also hinted about offering 3D content, and confirmed that SaskTel is looking into an on-line TV video portal plus ways to extend content to its customers’ mobile and on-line devices.
“We’ve seen the behaviour of our customers change, they really want to watch TV when and where they want to, and that’s been evidenced by our success with video-on-demand and our PVR”, she told Cartt.ca. “TV is available on-line anyway, and we know that (our customers are) going to watch it there, so we want to enhance the value of our VOD service and embrace that, and make the content available to them.”
Greg McLaren, manager of TV content for MTS, confirmed that his company is also looking in to ways to stream PVR content to mobile devices and PCs, but offered no timeline for deploying that service. His entertaining presentation expressed concern over changing TV viewing habits, particularly the availability of free TV content on-line, which he predicts could undermine the industry. He also recognized that his opinion runs contrary to those of some “influential broadcasters”.
“We remain concerned that the numbers and the ages of the people who are sourcing free TV on-line are growing faster than the industry and industry pundits realize”, he said.
TbayTel is currently in a soft launch of its digital TV service, with a commercial launch planned next month to 60% of its market in the city of Thunder Bay. The largest independent telco in Canada currently offers home phone service to about 70,000 customers in its territory, as well as high speed Internet, mobility and security services.
“Digital TV will round out our suite of services and give us the option for the home run play”, said Amy Meunier, content manager, digital TV.
The company competes against Shaw Cable, Shaw Direct and Bell TV in a territory that spans some 300,000 square kilometers in northwestern Ontario. Meunier said that the company is aiming to gain 25% of market share on the TV side with an offer that includes HD, whole home PVR and VOD services via Microsoft Mediaroom.
She believes that offering free local VOD content, such as news, sports and community events, as well as a “live interactive dashboard” which includes the local weather, movie listings, and lottery numbers, will provide a competitive advantage.
“The big question, of course, is – no matter how good it looks, how do we sell it?”, asked Sara Mason, product marketing specialist, digital TV. “We saw the need to develop a compelling strategy to help us steal the customers away, but not to trigger any kind of price war in our community.”
TbayTel said that it plans to cover 82% of its Thunder Bay market by the end 2012, representing approximately 7400 homes passed, and is experimenting with FTTH technology to help it increase its TV footprint.
