Telephone and cable companies, locked in an intense competitive battle, aim to move beyond their initial forays into each other's industries and develop services that cut across different platforms.
Vidéotron Ltée, for example, plans to develop new products in coming years that would allow subscribers to remotely program their personal video recorders (PVR) at home using their cellphones, or make calls and switch without interruption between land-line and wireless networks, Manon Brouillette, vice-president of marketing and new product development at the Montreal-based cable firm, said in a speech at the 2006 Canadian Telecom Summit in Toronto.
And top rival Bell Canada is conducting trials covering a number of combinations — fixed and mobile, computer- and device-based — of communications services, Brad Fisher, Bell's vice-president of consumer services development, told reporters after his presentation at the conference.
These industries had little to do with each other a decade ago, but they're increasingly butting heads. Cable companies got a head start last year, launching voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) telephone services over their cable systems. The big phone companies are responding by launching IP-based television services (IPTV) over their land lines.
Executives agree it's early days, with Ms. Brouillette describing Vidéotron's entry into the phone market as only the “tip of the iceberg.”
“Telephony itself is a building block in a mega construction project,” Ms. Brouillette told the conference. She later told reporters that “what we wanted to do first was stabilize the market with our voice service and then we're going to start introducing evolving products.”
IP opens the door to new applications because all content, including voice and video, can travel across the same pipe, according to Yankee Group analyst Jeff Leiper. An example of an existing converged service is access to voice-mail messages through e-mail.
However, companies will have to upgrade their networks to offer these new converged services, and find ways to make them attractive to consumers, he said.
“It's still early days,” he said. “Consumers don't know they want these services yet.”
Ms. Brouillette declined to provide a timeline for when the company will launch these new products. The next step is launching a cellphone service, using Rogers Communications Inc.'s network, some time by the end of this year, she told reporters.
Bell, a unit of BCE Inc., has launched VoIP services in the past year, and its IPTV service is in technical trials.
It's also currently doing trials of combinations of various services, Mr. Fisher said.
“We've invested in a variety of different platforms across voice, video, Internet and mobility,” Mr. Fisher said.
“It's the combination of these platforms in unique ways to deliver simple, seamless and integrated next-generation services for consumers. The whole of these platforms together is greater than the sum of the individual parts.”
