As BCE Inc.'s BCE-T president for residential services extolled the virtues of Bell's new Internet-based TV service, a telling reminder of the stakes and the pace of change in the industry flashed across a screen behind him.
Kevin Crull was standing in front of a smart phone streaming a live NFL game, a laptop displaying TV programming and a flat-screen TV showing a news program on CTV Inc., which BCE bid $1.3-billion for on Friday. At one point, a long advertisement started playing for a new wireless network being launched by rival telecom provider Vidéotron Ltée., a division of Montreal-based media powerhouse Quebecor Inc. QBR.B-T
“It's a massively competitive business,” Mr. Crull said, as the ads flashed behind him on the huge TV screen.
On Monday, at the company's Toronto International Film Festival headquarters, BCE officially launched Fibe, its new Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) service. Telcos have offered the product for some time in Canada, but have only recently settled on Microsoft Corp.'s Mediaroom delivery platform and started to heavily market the service.
Because the Fibe TV service is extremely expensive to roll out, pricier even than Bell's new wired Internet product, the project has taken a long time. Monday's launch followed a series of neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood rollouts throughout the summer. The service is currently only available to 500,000 homes in both Toronto and Montreal, Mr. Crull said in an interview, adding that the goal is to reach one million homes by mid-2011.
Currently, the TV markets in urban Toronto and Montreal are completely dominated by Rogers Communications Inc. and Vidéotron, respectively. The IPTV technology, which some analysts argue is better than cable, may allow Bell to gain some market share among urban consumers, though Scotia Capital Inc. analyst Jeff Fan has written that cable upgrades will eventually nullify any advantages.
But right now, the gap in technology seems obvious: Bell's IPTV service can record four separate shows at the same time and store up to 100 hours of programming, hook up to social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, track and map the user's children through their smart phones' GPS, pause and restart the same show from different TVs in the house, and has a search function that finds shows even if the user types in just the principal actor's name.
Mr. Crull said that he considers Bell more of an entertainment company than a straight communications company, reiterating Bell's stated goal to be the largest TV provider in Canada by 2015. “You can't separate entertainment and communications any more, because of broadband [high-speed Internet],” he said.
