Vidéotron, Quebec’s largest cable operator, is secretly filming some of their technicians on fake service calls to verify they are providing professional service to the company’s customers.

But instead of keeping the results to themselves, the company is publishing the resulting videos to their website for customers to enjoy.

A total of 21 technicians were put to the test, and the company set up some outrageous challenges for them to overcome, starting with a single woman trying to convince her mother the technician was her boyfriend, with comical results.

While we are unlikely to see the Vidéotron technicians that failed the tests, the company has launched a publicity campaign to praise itself for excellent service.

“Our conscientious technicians are ambassadors for Vidéotron and its values,” said Manon Brouillette, president of consumer markets. “We are very proud of them. They have achieved an impressive 96% customer satisfaction rate and this campaign is a tip of the hat to their great work.”

Putting technicians to the test, especially those working for third-party subcontractors, might not be a bad idea for some U.S. cable companies to try, especially after some of those technicians were later arrested for sexual assault, theft, and other crimes.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Videotron – The technician trap.flv[/flv]

Watch Vidéotron’s first edition of its hidden camera trap for company technicians, when a single woman gets in over her head with a little white lie.  (2 minutes)

Cogeco Cable is cracking down on customers who shop around for a better deal.

After dumping its money-losing Portuguese Cabovisao operation earlier this year, the company is looking to recoup its losses, and Canadian consumers are paying the price.

Chief Executive Louis Audet told investors Cogeco has tightened up promotions, giveaways, and credit standards to weed out bargain hunters and those who ultimately never pay their cable bill.

“If somebody else wants these undesirable customers, they’re theirs for the taking,” Audet said. “There’s too many promotion hoppers out there who are jumping from one supplier to the other.”

Audet

At least 9,000 customers left Cogeco during the second quarter, but that did nothing to hurt Cogeco’s bottom line.  Profits nearly quadrupled to $81.5 million according to Audet, but much of that is due to changes in accounting related to its sold-off Portuguese operation. Closer to home, Cogeco revenue inside Canada grew 12.4% from one year ago to $345.6 million.

Cogeco bought Televisao in 2006 for $465 million.  It sold it in February for just over $59 million.

Cogeco Cable, which serves subscribers in smaller cities and suburbs in Ontario and Quebec, is Canada’s fourth largest cable operator with more than 875,000 cable subscribers. Its biggest competitors are Bell (in Ontario and Quebec) and Telus, which has some landline operations on the Gaspé Peninsula in eastern Quebec.

Most of Cogeco’s promotions and retention offers appeal to customers threatening to take their business to the phone companies. But Audet signaled the promotional pricing had become so aggressive, some customers have learned to bounce back and forth between providers to maintain lower pricing indefinitely.

By tightening up customer promotions, Audet said, the company can achieve a “stable” customer base that pays regular Cogeco prices.

If you want better Canadian broadband with fewer tricks and traps and live in Ontario or Quebec: put the house up for sale, pack up your things, and head west.

Canada’s heavily metered and capped broadband is ubiquitous in the country’s two most-populated provinces where a convenient duopoly of Bell and Rogers in Ontario and Bell and Videotron in Quebec control the vast majority of the broadband market.  But cross west into Saskatchewan and things start to look a lot better.

Canadians telecommunications consultancy The Seaboard Group praised SaskTel, the provincial phone company, for refusing to slap usage caps on its customers.  SaskTel does not deliver the cheapest Internet access by any means, but the company is investing heavily in fiber optic upgrades to turn the page on aging copper wire infrastructure.  Stringing fiber through Regina, Saskatoon and beyond may seem counterintuitive to other providers.  Saskatchewan, one of Canada’s “prairie provinces,” is hardly packed with people.  With more than 20 million Canadians living in Ontario and Quebec, Saskatchewan gives its 1 million residents a lot of open space.  Sparser populations usually translate into higher costs per customer for upgrades, but SaskTel persists.

SaskTel has historically relied on traditional DSL and has competition in larger communities from Shaw Cable, western Canada’s largest cable operator.  Although SaskTel’s DSL delivers lower speeds than Shaw can provide, it does so with no usage limits.

Shaw’s decision to provide considerably more generous usage allowances has kept the pressure on SaskTel to upgrade its infrastructure to compete.

SaskTel CEO Ron Styles told the Leader-Post its fiber optic network will give cable a run for its money, and until then, it is satisfied undercutting cable pricing for broadband, delivering a far better experience than either Rogers or Bell provides eastern Canadians, Styles says.

Seaboard president Iain Grant found that what customers are willing to pay for service can also influence what prices providers charge.

“The price is more based on what you’re prepared to pay,” Grant said.

People in western Canada evidently are not willing to hand over as much money as their friends in Ontario and Quebec.

West of Saskatchewan lies Alberta and British Columbia — Telus territory.  Telus is western Canada’s largest phone company and also principally competes with Shaw Cable.

Shaw has forced Telus to back down on fueling enhanced revenue with usage caps of its own, and has been aggressively upgrading its network with additional fiber optics and DOCSIS 3 technology, forcing Telus to embark on its own upgrade effort.

Macleans reports western Canada’s more-competitive broadband market has been good for consumers, but has also exposed a difference in priorities for providers.

With Shaw breathing down its neck, Telus has committed to a $3 billion fiber optic network expansion in B.C., improved wireless coverage, and more IPTV service.  Macleans notes Telus is the only major telecom or cable company in Canada that hasn’t purchased a television asset, focusing instead on its core businesses of connecting customers.

In eastern Canada, Bell faces Rogers and Videotron.  Critics contend Bell sees no imminent threats there, and the phone giant is spending its money elsewhere, announcing a $3.4 billion acquisition of Astral Media — an entertainment company owning 24 specialty cable channels and pay-TV networks, including the Movie Network and HBO Canada.

Bell’s latest “investment” follows its 2010 $1.3 billion buyout of CTV and last year’s $1.32 billion co-purchase of Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment (the other buyer was their ‘arch-competitor’ Rogers Communications).

While Telus spends money on upgrading its broadband and video services to customers, Bell is positioning itself to control 34% of Canada’s TV universe.  Bell is also the same company that advocated slapping nationwide usage-based pricing on Canadian broadband consumers to pay for the “network upgrades” it contends were needed to handle increasing demand.

Bell Canada Enterprises, Inc. announced Monday it extended its Fibe Internet and television service to most parts of Quebec City.

Unlike in most other Fibe-enabled Canadian cities, Bell’s network in Quebec City offers true fiber to the home service, not a combination of fiber to the neighborhood/copper wire.  That means increased broadband speeds — downloads up to 175Mbps and uploads of up to 30Mbps.  Quebec City was selected for true fiber service because of of the predominance of overhead aerial wiring, which is much easier and cheaper to replace with fiber than underground wiring.  For other major Canadian cities like Montreal and Toronto, Bell has made do with a lesser network that combines fiber and existing copper phone wiring that offers lower capacity for broadband and video services.

Bell says Fibe is now open for business in the region’s boroughs of Quebec, Beauport, Sillery, Ste-Foy, Cap-Rouge, Charlesbourg, L’Ancienne-Lorette, Loretteville, Sainte-Therese-de-Lisieux and Montmorency.  Service for Levis is expected shortly.

The company says it intends to reserve additional fiber to the home service primarily for multi-dwelling units and new housing developments in Ontario and Quebec, primarily between Windsor in the west and Quebec City in the east.

The company’s aggressive deployment of fiber is an effort to stem landline losses in eastern Canada.  Between cell phone providers and cable companies like Rogers, Cogeco, and Quebecor’s Vidéotron Ltee., Canadians have been hanging up permanently on Bell landlines at an alarming rate for the company.

Dvai Ghose, analyst at Canaccord Genuity told his clients, “Bell is now reporting amongst the worst residential line losses in North America.”  In the last quarter alone, 90,000 Bell customers said goodbye, perhaps permanently.

Bell has lost more than 1.2 million customers in the last two years.  Even Fibe may not be enough to stem the losses.  Canadians are not excited by the company’s video or broadband services, adding only around 27,000 new customers in the last quarter.  Bell’s notorious love of Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps may be partly responsible.  The company enjoys a poor reputation among Internet enthusiasts for its wholehearted support for usage-limiting Canada’s online experience.

Financial analysts believe aggressive deployment of Fibe may be critical to the company’s long term survival.  Not only must Bell compete with a trend towards wireless phones, it has cable competitors selling triple play packages of phone, Internet and television service at prices that are frequently lower than what Bell charges.

Fibe is expected to be expanded to include the entire island of Montreal and some of the surrounding region by the end of 2012.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bell Entertainment Fibre Internet and TV in Canada.flv[/flv]

An extended length introductory commercial for Bell Canada’s Fibe TV and Internet.  (6 minutes)

Citing “the many enhancements they have launched” in the past year, Rogers Cable has announced an across-the-board broadband rate increase that will cost subscribers an additional $2 a month for Internet service effective March 1, 2012.

Rogers claims the rate increases come as a result of investments in their broadband network and the introduction of SpeedBoost, which delivers a temporary speed increase during the first few seconds of file transfers.

Rogers also claims they have increased monthly usage allowances and download speeds on many of the company’s broadband packages.

The rate increase is not going over well with subscribers, however.

Stop the Cap! reader Nick in Markham, Ontario is one of them.

"No additional charge," except for the $2 rate increase Rogers suggests comes after the addition of "service enhancements" like SpeedBoost.

“Rogers introduced ‘SpeedBoost’ as a ‘free’ feature which we are now apparently/effectively going to pay more for,” Nick writes. “I am really unimpressed with Rogers’ ‘generosity,’ especially respecting bitcaps, considering they are totally arbitrary.”

Nick notes customers in Quebec and western Canada have more generous usage allowances, and often lower bills.

“Shaw customers are getting a much better deal than Rogers’ customers these days,” Nick says. “If Rogers increased prices by $2 and took the caps completely off, I’d gladly pay a little more just to end years of headaches over watching my Internet usage.”

“I am so tired of feeling like my Internet connection is being rationed, and considering my choices have been Bell or Rogers, I think I’ll sacrifice some of the higher speeds and just consider switching to TekSavvy DSL, because it costs less and doesn’t come with Rogers’ stingy caps.”

A Montreal Gazette piece on the Canadian telecommunications industry says stockholders and company executives are doing much better, enjoying major boosts in telecom industry dividends.  The industry enjoyed a 25% boost in stock price + dividend yield over other Canadian stocks over the past 12 months.  The industry also enjoys the benefits a barely-competitive marketplace that offers opportunities for unfettered rate increases:

Canada remains a heavily protected market in telecommunications, which is one reason why consumers don’t get the kind of deals available in other countries.

But in the absence of such [competitive] changes, there’s a strong case to be made that telecom and cable companies will post solid profit growth this year and next.