Shaw serves notice of rate hikes.

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Shaw serves notice of rate hikes.

Postby kal » Tue Jun 07, 2016 11:42 am

Perhaps to help cover the costs of the Wind Mobile acquisition, perhaps to offset revenue drops from cord cutting, but no matter the reason most could see this coming.

The company has served notice that rates for television packages, Internet service and for home phone service are going up August 1. However, the company does not spell out what those increases will be.

http://www.shaw.ca/Customer-Bulletins/Residential-Rate-Increase/
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Re: Shaw serves notice of rate hikes.

Postby jon » Tue Jun 07, 2016 12:45 pm

kal wrote:Perhaps to help cover the costs of the Wind Mobile acquisition

From the Shaw Customer Bulletin:
These rate increases help to support future Internet and network enhancements and quality programming our customers have come to expect from us.

Does "network enhancements" include Wind? If so, the money from the rate increase would be earmarked for upgrading Wind's outdated cellular network, rather than funding the purchase itself.

My personal guess is that Shaw is quite happy to borrow the money now for the Wind purchase and hope to get it back down the road in profits from their expansion into the cellular business. As I understand it, the reorganization of Shaw and Corus made it easier to get financing for the Wind purchase by balancing the debt loads of the two companies.

Another factor that would warrant a rate increase is the economic slowdown caused by the deep dive in Oil Prices. That has translated into a lot of Shaw service cancellations.

One that is fun to speculate about, but admittedly not likely, is for Shaw to go after SaskTel, which has not even been confirmed as being for sale by the Saskatchewan government. Nonetheless, Shaw would be foolish not to at least consider the possibility of doing a competitive bid if TELUS goes after SaskTel. Like Wind though, Shaw wouldn't be hiking rates to fund the purchase, but would simply borrow the money and pay it back from future profits in Saskatchewan.
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Re: Shaw serves notice of rate hikes.

Postby Doug » Wed Jun 15, 2016 8:11 pm

Watch further erosion in their TV and Internet customer bases, particularly Internet, as Telus continues its fibre-to-the-home rollout. This will just accelerate this.

I actually think Shaw is arguably the worst managed media and cable/telecom company in Canada. First they say, "we don't need wireless," then reverse course and by Wind Mobile. Previously, they didn't want to be a media company then bought the former CanWest assets and subsequently sold it to Corus, whose controlling shareholders also control Shaw. The only decent buy I approved of was that of ViaWest.

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Re: Shaw serves notice of rate hikes.

Postby kal » Wed Jun 15, 2016 8:59 pm

I'm not sure that the Telus fibre-to-the-home concept is resonating with consumers. I'm in one of the municipalities with FTTH. I'm hard pressed to find anyone that has switched because of it. I found one person and he switched only for the higher upload speed (10 Mbps) because he runs a video editing business and needs to send large files. The download speed for Telus FTTH is presently maxing out at 100 or 120 Mbps, a speed which you can get from Shaw as well. Forget the "speed of light" advertising that Telus runs to promote their fibre connectivity. It's pure bunk. As we all know, electricity also moves at the speed of light.

Will FTTH eventually be better than cable? Probably. However, there is little incentive to crank up the fibre bandwidth. Now if we could get the likes of Google into Canada with their symmetric gigabit fibre at sub $100 rates then there would be enormous incentive to improve. However, that isn't happening in at least the next half decade and possibly much longer.
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Re: Shaw serves notice of rate hikes.

Postby Howaboutthat » Wed Jun 15, 2016 9:39 pm

Not everyone cares about top internet speed. What I have found in my neighbourhood where many have switched from Shaw to Telus is they prefer more channel selection and better picture.
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Re: Shaw serves notice of rate hikes.

Postby kal » Wed Jun 15, 2016 10:40 pm

re: picture quality ... I've heard from some with Optik TV (not on fibre though) that they were unhappy with the picture quality. And then there is the matter of Telus/Optik refusing to carry BC1, the Global all-news service.
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Re: Shaw serves notice of rate hikes.

Postby jon » Thu Jun 16, 2016 11:47 am

Head scratcher from Shaw, as reported by TD, out of yesterday's "2016 Telecom & Media Forum":
70% of WIND's data traffic is expected to be carried via WiFi in the future.

Shaw also repeated earlier statements that they have budgeted $250 million in Capital Expenditures for their wireless business plan.
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Re: Shaw serves notice of rate hikes.

Postby albertaboy4life » Thu Jun 16, 2016 12:21 pm

TELUS Optik's picture quality has improved substantially since I first got the service in October 2012.

Since then the receiver firmware has been updated, at least twice; the source of the signals, particularly the eastern US feeds of the conventional network (ABC, CBS, etc.) stations from Boston has changed from BELL to WGBH (Boston's PBS affiliate) and its uplink service; 1080P video is available for pay per view purchases; etc.

One example (proof) of the change in the source of the Boston feeds, from BELL, is no longer seeing CHCH Hamilton simsub over a US network show. CHCH Hamilton, to my knowledge, has never been available on TELUS Optik. The BELL sourced feeds also looked washed out and lacking detail.

I've never had the the picture on TELUS Optik ever break up like the opening of CBS's Big Bang Theory on KREM Spokane on my SHAW cable box. It simply couldn't render the fast-motion sequence at the end of the opening without going completely pixelated. A similar experience would occur annually during any sporting event that saw confetti or streamers raining down on the competitors after winning a professional sporting championship.

The one remaining poor quality video stream is that of Netflix via the built-in Optik Netflix app. It's horrible and seems to only ever be in 2 channel Dolby Digital stereo audio.

4K is beyond a pipe-dream for Optik at this time, however.
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