TORONTO – “There’s no doubt in our minds that the power of the bundle is true and helps us in grabbing more market share,” said Quebecor’s Jean-François Pruneau Wednesday during Scotiabank’s Telecom, Media and Technology Conference held in Toronto.
“This is an infrastructure business. The more the company has, the more savings we can realize and pass onto the customer. Vidéotron has a strong reputation of being innovative about services, but also about the way we approach the customer dynamic with respect to promotions and value add,” said the broadcaster, cable company and wireless operator’s CFO.
“Whether you’re talking about services like Club Illico, which we make available for free, or even the music unlimited service, which we had to discontinue due to a CRTC ruling, they have helped us differentiate our service. A year ago, we were grabbing an 18% market share, where we are now in the 22-23% range.”
Pruneau added that while wireline telephony continues to face an uphill battle retaining subscribers, Vidéotron continues to see good gains in the broadband market. “Broadband is still growing organically. The market is still not fully penetrated, and the pricing power is tremendous. It has become an essential service from the customer perspective. This year, we’ve increased our prices by 5% on broadband packages and have not seen a negative impact on subscriber statistics,” Pruneau says.
Pruneau doesn’t deny the company’s cable television business is feeling the competition from Bell’s expanding Fibe offering in its footprint, but he explained even after increasing cable television pricing by 3% this year, customers stayed, thanks to the value of the content Vidéotron brings to the table.
“In fact, people tend to believe with Bell building its fibre… it’s going to have a major impact on us (but) the biggest driver of relative success with respect to sub adds is not network technology, it’s demographics. In markets where we see more French language people, because they consume French-language content, we tend to be more successful.”
