Shaw hikes rates, triples profits

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Re: Shaw hikes rates, triples profits

Postby kal » Sun Sep 04, 2016 12:11 pm

It would appear that Telus and Shaw are now locked into a bit of a subscriber war here in BC and Alberta for the high speed Internet business, that is at speeds over 100 Mbps.

Shaw caught the market, and Telus it would appear, off guard with its network-wide rollout of a 150 Mbps service (WideOpen Internet 150) priced aggressively for existing customers and even more aggressively for churn customers.

On August 17 Telus reacted by essentially matching the price for Shaw's plan, on a no-contract basis. It also approached existing 150 customers in an attempt to lock them in for another two years. The sweetener from Telus is that it bumped the outbound (upload) speed from 30 to 150 Mbps. For most, that outbound speed isn't of much concern; it can however be helpful to those who work with large files but for the most part it is the download speed that matters to most customers.

The downside for Telus is that it can't offer the 150/150 service where it doesn't have fibre to the home. Here in the Vancouver area that is pretty much everywhere except for Port Coquitlam. The company is aggressively working in Vancouver City and it hopes to have fibre in most areas there within 3 years.

The downside for Shaw is that the company can't boost its outbound speed above the present 15 or so Mbps.

It seems that the Shaw move has spooked Telus into both cutting the price for its high speed plan and into increasing one measure of performance. Shaw's plan would appear to be popular. Local Shaw stores have signs up indicating that the company is temporarily out of the Hitron modems that are needed for the 150 service.

Interesting times. Let's see how this plays out in the lead up to the introduction of pick-and-pay for TV service on December 1.
kal
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