Telus, Shaw roll out new networks
By Lewis Kelly, edmontonjournal.com
February 9, 2012
EDMONTON — Western telecom providers continued their contest for the wallets of Canadians this week. Telus launches an upgraded wireless network Friday, while on Monday Shaw rolled out its new Exo fibre optic network.
Telus’s new Long Term Evolution wireless system allows next-generation mobile electronics faster online access than the company’s current 4G network. LTE-enabled devices will enjoy download speeds between 12 and 25 megabytes per second — twice the speed of the current system, according to Monty Carter, senior vice-president with Telus.
The new network will operate in 14 urban centres across Canada, including Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. Bell and Rogers, major competitors for Telus in the cellphone market, began offering LTE networks in mid-2011.
To access these new networks, users need a compatible device. Currently, three devices available through Telus can make use of an LTE network: a Samsung tablet PC, the Optimus smartphone from LG and a mobile Internet key for laptops made by NovAtel.
Carter acknowledged not all Telus customers will benefit immediately from the new network, but predicted long-term demand for more data will push most users beyond 4G eventually.
“It’s insatiable,” he said of the consumer appetite for bandwidth. “If I look back four years ago, you had an 80 per cent voice, 20 per cent data mixture. Today, it’s the exact opposite — we’re loading 80 per cent data, 20 per cent voice.”
According to the most recent CRTC statistics, Canadian cellphone firms draw a quarter of their mobile operations revenue from data charges.
Meanwhile, Shaw, which last fall decided not to enter the cellphone business, announced improvements to its cable network earlier this week. The upgrade, dubbed “Exo,” lets customers watch television at 1,080p resolution and boosts maximum Internet speeds from 100 megabytes per second to 250 megabytes per second. Exo also adds an on-demand streaming service for certain television shows.
Shaw’s move came one day before Telus added motion-control and mobile streaming services to its Optik TV service.
Dvai Ghose, a telecom analyst with Canaccord Genuity, praised Telus’s recent moves. “I think they’re doing exceptionally well,” he said. “They are leaps and bounds above Shaw.” Ghose describes a string of Telus successes against its chief telecom rival in Western Canada dating back to the summer of 2010, when Telus re-launched its Telus TV service under the name Optik.
“Telus has the advantage of being able to offer wire-line and wireless,” he said. “Telus can attack Shaw really hard in cable, which is where Shaw makes the vast majority of its money. Telus makes the majority of its money in wireless, and Shaw can’t attack Telus in wireless.”
Shaw generated 61 per cent of its first-quarter 2012 revenue through cable services. It also lost nearly 23,000 basic cable customers. Telus’s wireless operations, according to its most recent quarterly report, generate 54 per cent of its revenue. The report claims 453,000 Optik TV customers, up 70 per cent from the same time last year.
Telus currently runs Optik TV at a loss.
Ghose also dismissed concerns about Telus’s comparatively late entry into the LTE field. “To be a couple of months behind on LTE when it’s very nascent, I think, is largely irrelevant,” he said. “You tell me when you think Apple is going to build a new LTE device and I’ll tell you when I think people are going to be really excited about LTE.”
Popular Apple devices such as the iPhone 4S do not support LTE networks.
A smaller player in Canadian telecom also made a new move this week. Primus Canada, which bills itself as Canada’s largest alternative communications provider, announced the expansion of its telephone and Internet services in Alberta and British Columbia on Thursday.
“Today’s expansion means that more than two million households in B.C. and Alberta can access Primus’s full range of services,” said Rob Warden, senior vice-president of residential services with Primus.
Primus Canada is a subsidiary of Virginia-based Primus Telecommunications Group, which also operates in the U.S., Australia and Brazil. The parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy under American law in 2009 and re-joined the stock market last summer.
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