MONTREAL — Two years and $1 billion after Videotron launched its mobile service, president and CEO Robert Dépatie had a lot to brag about when speaking to a mobile conference in Montreal on Thursday. It has a client base of 400,000 that is growing by 31,000 net new clients in the past quarter and its mobile television network Lib TV, which the company qualifies as a first in Canada, has 1.3 million video views.
But it's hard to write about Videotron's mobile service without mentioning Apple's iPhone, which is incompatible with its AWS technology and therefore, a hole in the company’s wireless port folio.
"It bothers us a lot" that the iPhone isn't compatible, Dépatie said.
"Our internal analysis shows we lose about 20% revenue" by not having it. But at the same time, Android is growing as an alternative and the Samsung Galaxy S3 in particular has shown itself to be an "extraordinary" device, and better than the iPhone, he said. "That's why we're working very close with Samsung, because we believe Samsung really has the talent and the expertise necessary to help us win in the short, medium and long term."
Dépatie (pictured below giving his speech) told journalists he believes a recent deal between Apple and U.S. network T-Mobile, which uses the same AWS technology, is inevitable because Apple needs T-Mobile to continue to grow its market share. Rumours of such a deal being imminent have been flowing for years, however, and Dépatie said he didn't want to start any new ones because he didn't want to get another angry call from Apple.
Apple-loving Videotron users did get one bit of good news when Dépatie announced that the company would be launching an iPad app for its illico Web service "in the coming days,” adding another potential screen for subscribers to watch programming (but, for now, only when they're on a Wi-Fi network). Dépatie specified that the company has no plans to actually sell iPads in its retail stores.
Asked about the upcoming 700 MHz spectrum auction (which, if won by Videotron would solve its iPhone problem), Dépatie said "we're in the process of making a decision" about whether or not to bid. "It would be irresponsible of us to not analyze if we need to participate," he said, and he expected a bid would be likely. But Dépatie said that it's not absolutely necessary to obtain new spectrum. Videotron is only using half its 40 MHz spectrum allocation, and could accommodate another 300,000 clients to its mobile service and launch an LTE network using its existing spectrum.
"We have time to make good choices," Dépatie said.
Asked about possibly joining other small players like Wind Mobile or Public Mobile to build a national network or purchase more spectrum jointly, Dépatie wouldn't comment. "Even if it was the case, I couldn't tell you," he said.
Dépatie spent part of his speech attacking what he called myths about Videotron's mobile service. Among them, that Videotron is a big player, that new mobile entrants are unreliable, that Quebecers pay too much for mobile service, that only Quebecor-owned companies can develop projects with Videotron, and that Videotron is a residential-services-only company.
Finally, Dépatie announced that Videotron would be opening up an application programming interface in a few months, allowing apps to access customer mobile usage data. Dépatie told journalists later that they might look to open up other interfaces later, depending on how this API works out.
