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Bell: If You Don’t Sell Us the Frequencies, We’ll See That Rural Canada Gets Nothing

Bell this week brought out its saber collection for a little rattling in Ottawa over the Canadian government’s consideration of a plan to set aside certain mobile spectrum for new competitors.

A mobile spectrum auction, expected later this year, will increase the number of 700Mhz frequencies available for wireless communications.

Some of Canada’s largest cell phone companies are well-positioned to outbid the competition, but not if Industry Canada decides it needs to set aside some of the frequencies for an auction among smaller competitors.

BCE, Inc., the parent company of Bell, has little regard for that plan and has now joined Rogers in a lobbying effort for an “open and transparent” sale, which effectively means the highest bidder takes all.

If Canada doesn’t follow Bell’s advice, the company is threatening to withhold advanced mobile Internet services in Canada’s lesser-populated regions.

“An auction for this spectrum that isn’t open and transparent would limit the amount of spectrum available to Bell, forcing a focus on more densely populated centers in order for Bell to compete with new carriers,” the company said in a news release.

In response, Wind Mobile, one of the newest entrants in the Canadian mobile market, said it would sit out of a spectrum auction that favored deep-pocketed incumbents with winner-take-all rules.  In short, it could not afford the prices players like Rogers and Bell will be able to bid for the new frequencies.

Industry Minister Christian Paradis was unwilling to set an exact date or format for the 700MHz spectrum auctions.  Observers suspect if he waits much longer, the auction won’t take place until 2013.

Just three major wireless companies — Bell, Rogers, and Telus, control 94 percent of the Canadian wireless market.

Back to Kansas City: Google Fiber Now Going in the Ground; TV Service Also Announced

Phillip Dampier February 23, 2012 AT&T, Broadband Speed, Competition, Google Fiber & Wireless, Video Comments Off on Back to Kansas City: Google Fiber Now Going in the Ground; TV Service Also Announced

Nearly one year ago, Google selected Kansas City, Kansas as the first city to “Think Big With a Gig,” a gigabit fiber to the home broadband network that would shatter misconceptions that Americans don’t need lightning-fast broadband speeds.

In the original announcement, early 2012 was slated to be the target date for the service to become available in at least some areas of the city.  After months of wrangling with utility companies and the city government, Google began burying the first fiber lines earlier this month.  This week, it filed for permission with both Kansas and Missouri officials to compliment its forthcoming broadband service with a complete cable-TV package as well.

Google’s fiber project now has incumbent operators on both sides of the Missouri and Kansas Rivers concerned about forthcoming competition from the search engine giant, especially after Google announced it would wire both the Kansas and Missouri sides of the city.

Greater Kansas City is primarily served by Time Warner Cable and AT&T, but smaller cable operators also offer service in some areas.  Google is considering a competitive cable package with video on demand.  It is expected to wrap up licensing negotiations with programmers within a month or two, and some of its contracts allow Google to sell cable service outside of the Kansas City area, a potentially interesting development should Google want to provide an Internet-based cable system to subscribers in other cities.

We have collected several media reports on the Google project in Kansas City to bring readers up to date:

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WDAF Kansas City Gigabit Challenge Offers Google-Friendly Ideas 12-6-11.flv[/flv]

WDAF in Kansas City reports on some of the submissions to Google’s Gigabit Challenge — a competition to consider how to leverage 1,000Mbps broadband. (12/6/11 — 2 minutes)

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WDAF Kansas City Why is Google Fiber Set Up Taking so Long 1-18-12.flv[/flv]

WDAF reports on what is holding up the Google Fiber project.  It turns out local utilities have been harder to deal with than originally thought.  (1/18/12 — 3 minutes)

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KMBC Kansas City Google Begins Fiber Installation In KCK 2-6-12.flv[/flv]

KMBC reports Google is ready to break ground on its new fiber network.  (2/6/12 — 2 minutes)

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KCTV Kansas City Google Starts Laying Fiber 2-18-12.mp4[/flv]

KCTV says Google started laying fiber this week.  The new service is on the way.  (2 minutes)

Rogers: Bill Shock Warnings Cost Us Money; Subscribers Fearing Fees Stop Using Data

Phillip Dampier February 23, 2012 Broadband Speed, Canada, Consumer News, Data Caps, Online Video, Rogers 1 Comment

Ever wonder why cell phone companies are upset about new regulations that would warn customers when they are about to face mobile usage overlimit or roaming fees?  Rogers Communications explains why in their latest quarterly results:

Nadir Mohamed, CEO:

There was, however, a sequential slowing in the wireless data revenue growth rate, and that’s primarily attributable to new outbound data roaming plans that we put in place. With these new plans, we put in place automated customer notification mechanisms that had a net effect of slowing usage versus stimulating it to the degree that we expected it to. We’re in the process of modifying how these plans and notifications work, which I expect will have a more stimulative effect and help restore the trajectory we had for wireless data growth.

In simpler terms, Rogers began notifying their customers through text messaging when they were about to start data roaming — the most expensive data usage around, incurred when you leave Rogers’ service area and roam on another provider’s network.  With Canadians visiting the United States and elsewhere, using a cell phone while traveling can get expensive fast.  Rogers created new roaming data plans for customers likely to need the service while abroad.  But their roaming data plans come at steep prices:

Unintended consequences: When subscribers know they are about to pay more, they stop using.

U.S. Data Passes

Day Pass: $5 for 2MB
Day Pass: $10 for 10MB
Day Pass: $20 for 40MB
Week Pass: $25 for 15MB
Week Pass: $50 for 60MB
Week Pass: $100 for 250MB

The warnings that customers were about to incur even higher a-la-carte roaming fees or start to consume their day or weekly data pass had the unintended, but highly predictable effect of getting people to think carefully about using data while roaming.

Bruce

While good for consumers, that is bad for Rogers’ bottom line, so the company’s formerly frank warnings to customers are “being modified” to help the company “stimulate” revenue and restore the predicted revenue growth from the high-priced roaming plans.

“We tried to create real transparency about when people and how people could get on data packages as they went overseas,” admits Robert Bruce, president of Rogers Communications Division. “We put in a fair number of reminders to let people know that they were on à la carte pricing, and we think that these dissuaded significantly customers from using it and possibly created some confusion along the way.”

Rogers Cable customers are also finding some of the company’s newest innovations a challenge to their monthly broadband usage allowances, among the lowest in Canada:

  • Rogers Remote TV Manager: Enables cable subscribers to search programming and manage PVR recordings anytime on any device;
  • Rogers Live TV. This service lets cable customers stream live TV channels on their tablets and watch shows anywhere they are in the home;
  • Rogers On Demand TV app on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 LIVE platform, bringing Rogers On Demand TV to the gaming console;
  • A refresh of the digital cable user interface, improving ease of use for the Whole Home PVR and a better program guide and search function.

In the long term, Rogers is moving towards an IP-based delivery system for its video programming, allowing the company to deliver video across different platforms more efficiently.  As Rogers converts the rest of its cable systems to digital cable, it is opening up new broadband capacity — a critical part of the company’s revenues.

Rogers admits it uses data caps to drive revenue.  By moving customers into higher usage, more expensive tiers, Rogers is able to drive revenue upwards as well.

“As customers continue every quarter, in and out, to consume more and more and spend more and more time on the Internet, we think it’s both a great opportunity for us and a welcome addition to the product offering from a customer perspective,” Bruce said.

Telus Sends Us A Survey About Why We Left, Even Though We Were Never There

Phillip Dampier February 23, 2012 Canada, Data Caps, Editorial & Site News, Telus 3 Comments

Phillip "Telus Lost Me" Dampier

For my first vacation in more than 20 years, I chose to spend 10 days in Alberta in 2007, driving a Dodge Charger (what National car rental considers an ‘economy size’ in Calgary) from Calgary to Banff, Ft. Macleod to Crossfield, and a variety of places in-between.  It’s an amazing place, far too under-rated.  I even bought a hat.

Telus Country.

While I confess to using the rental lodge’s Telus phone more than once, I never signed up as a customer.

But Telus thinks I did.

In today’s e-mail, a survey about why we canceled our Telus service.

We’re helpers at Stop the Cap! so we participated, telling them they could go a long way to improve their service by officially abandoning Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps and bring western Canada the unlimited Internet people deserve.

It’s the least we could do for a company that honestly never did anything for us (and we mean that in a good way).

Updated: Here Come the Streaming Paywalls: Comcast, March Madness Now Charging for Online Access

Phillip Dampier February 22, 2012 Comcast/Xfinity, Consumer News, Online Video, Video 3 Comments

The Great Wall of Pay

Now that the cable industry’s “TV Everywhere” online video platform has been established, some programmers are discovering they can become lucrative revenue streams as well as a deterrent to cable cord-cutting.

Time Warner (no relationship to Time Warner Cable) and CBS have decided giving away live sports programming for free is unacceptable and will now charge for online viewing of certain March Madness basketball games.

Since 2006, the basketball tournament, which may include hoops from https://www.megaslam.com.au/adjustable-basketball-hoops/, has been available for free online viewing, but starting March 7, viewers will need to pay $3.99 for full access to all 67 games [and basic cable viewers will need to verify] they are current cable, satellite, or telco TV subscribers. [See clarification below.]

Online viewing of games televised on CBS will be available for free, but the new paywall will block free access to selected games shown on cable networks TNT, TBS, and TruTV in certain cases.

Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes sees charging for online viewing as a substantial new revenue stream.

Monetizing online viewing is a high priority for programmers, even though much of the programming will continue to carry commercial advertising.  Last year, an estimated 2.6 million daily visitors watched March Madness online.  At $3.99 each, that would net the two companies nearly $10.4 million dollars.

The madness will now cost you $3.99

In a separate announcement, Comcast says it will launch a new Netflix-like on-demand streaming service tomorrow for its cable subscribers.

Streampix (free for triple play customers, $4.99/mo for others) will offer on-demand movies and TV series licensed from NBC-Universal, Warner Bros., Sony Pictures, and Disney.

Selected content can be watched while on the go, but a substantial amount of what Streampix is expected to offer is already available through services like Hulu.

Streampix is designed to appeal to customers who currently pay $7-8 a month for Netflix or Hulu+.

The move establishes Comcast’s own “paywall” for a deeper catalog of online video content, supplementing programming it gives away at no charge to “authenticated” cable subscribers.

Comcast will not sell Streampix to non-Comcast customers.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bloomberg Comcast Streampix 2-21-12.flv[/flv]

Bloomberg reports Comcast’s Streampix service is unlikely to pose a major challenge to services like Netflix.  (4 minutes)

Clarification:  A reader suggested we better clarify the viewing options.  It gets complicated depending on what kind of video/broadband subscription you have, where you want to watch, and what kind of feed you want:

CBS-televised games: Available for free with no restrictions from CBS website.

Basic Cable games: If you want to watch outside of the home, on certain portable devices, or do not have a combined broadband/cable-TV subscription, you will need to purchase a subscription for $3.99 from the NCAA.  Free streaming is only available to authenticated cable/broadband subscribers watching from their home broadband account on devices pre-approved by your pay television provider.

Open/Full Access: If you want full, unrestricted access you need to pay for the NCAA ® March Madness ® Live™ app ($3.99).  Since this app provides the NCAA’s own video and audio feeds, you don’t need a cable subscription.

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