Telus taking it slow to ensure it’s done right
Paul Marck
Sun
Television, your future is calling — by phone. After years of planning and testing, Telus TV is finally bringing TV to viewers over phone lines in Alberta and B.C., using technology developed in Edmonton.
However, if you want to sign up for Telus TV in the Lower Mainland, you’ll have to wait for a phone call or an invitation in regular mail from Telus.
In other words, don’t call them, they’ll call you,
There’s a simple reason for the many delays in launching the new service, says Fred Di Blasio, Telus’s vice-president of consumer product marketing.
“We wanted to make sure we got it right,” said Di Blasio, a Montreal native and former executive with AT&T in New York and at Britain’s Cable & Wireless.
Now a quiet rollout is offering an alternative to cable and satellite TV in selected neighbourhoods in Edmonton, Calgary and the Lower Mainland.
“We have to upgrade our customers to six or seven megabits [per second] on their lines before they can get it,” Jim Johannsson, Telus service development director, said of the B.C. rollout. “Generally, most customers have just under two megabits now.
“So, when it’s available in the neighbourhood, we’ll contact them and give them the materials and pitch them the offer.”
Telus gave The Journal an exclusive preview of its new TV service, which operates on its ADSL high-speed Internet network and runs into customer homes on existing copper telephone wire.
What consumers will get, some of which is different from standard cable, is an Internet-based digital service, with video on demand, telephone call display on their TV screens and a host of special features such as program reminders.
They’re all displayed in an on-screen menu that has interactive features similar to those of a computer.
Initially, Telus TV, which uses Internet bandwidth, can connect to a maximum two TVs per household, in addition to telephone and Internet service. Telus promises that will go up to three sets per home after the company upgrades to the next-generation ADSL2+ network sometime over the next couple of years.
Telus is making a low-key launch of the new service through direct-mail advertising in neighbourhoods where it is available — a far cry from the lavish news conferences and wine receptions Shaw staged last year for the start of its telephone service.
It will take some time for network upgrades in Alberta and B.C.’s major cities before Telus TV is generally available, expected after next summer.
Johannsson said that Telus, which has been quietly offering its TV service for a month, doesn’t have the capacity to roll it out all at once.
“What’s hurting us is our experience with ADSL a few years ago. Everybody had to have ADSL and we couldn’t build it fast enough. “And we had people just frothing mad, because we couldn’t serve their neighbourhood quickly enough and we had customers on wait lists.”
Johannsson said this time, Telus wants to contact customers and then be able to come and install Telus TV and show them what it can do.
Telus TV’s programming ranges from Canadian and U.S. standards, to specialty sports, culture, movies, kids’ and adult entertainment and 45 commercial-free radio channels.
“You get unbelievable picture quality, with more than 200 digital channels,” Di Blasio said. “Plus you get choice, with video on demand; you get call display. It’s a plethora of different services that today no one else can match.
“It’s exciting and it’s leading edge. It is what I left the U.S. for,” said Di Blasio, who joined Telus 18 months ago.
While competitors package a TV offering with telephone and high-speed Internet, Telus said it is the first company in Canada to offer add-on features in a basic package.
In Alberta, it starts with a basic lineup of 24 channels for $22 a month. Customers can add theme “packs” of sports, entertainment, lifestyle, news and family choices at $6 a month for up to four packs and declining rates for more.
But unlike cable, Telus offers up to 44 individual channels at $2 a month each. Like cable, movie, feature, international and adult entertainment packages are available at from $8 to $20 a month. Video-on-demand movies are $5 each.
The TV project faced some big technical hurdles.
“The technology has not been around for 40 years, the way cable technology has,” Di Blasio said.
It started in the late 1990s, when 3,200 new homes in Edmonton and Calgary were built with special wiring for a possible new Telus TV product. But several years of testing concluded that TV couldn’t be delivered over standard, twisted-pair copper telephone wires.
The project was abandoned.
But as Internet technology became more refined, Telus took another stab at it. By 2002, the company had developed a special Internet infrastructure in Edmonton for media services.
Not only was the product developed there, the operations centre is in Telus’s downtown Edmonton Toll Building, where TV content from satellite and other sources is distributed to Telus customers in Alberta and B.C.
Quebec is to be added later.
With racks of file servers, banks of monitors and a central control desk, the set-up looks like something out of the Starship Enterprise. As insurance against potential power failures, all systems are backed up by batteries and there are gas turbines on the roof.
Telus won’t say how much it has spent bringing its TV offering to market, but indications are that it has been hundreds of millions since the late ’90s. Nor will the company say what kind of subscriber numbers it expects.
“I think with Telus you get a premium product, with differentiated elements to it. I think that’s a great deal for customers. That’s what they want, and that’s what we’re going to provide them with.”
The TV service is part of an overall consumer plan Telus calls the “Future-Friendly Home,” which is designed to integrate a growing number of products and services seamlessly into a customer’s life. What began with wireline phone service years ago has been augmented by DSL high-speed Internet, Internet home security and, now, TV.
Now, with an ugly four-month labour dispute behind it, Telus is ramping up. More product announcements are expected next year. It expects to hire up to 800 new staff in Alberta and B.C. over the next couple of years for customer service and installation to backstop its new TV offering.
“I think the company is viewed as a trendsetter in the industry,” Di Blasio said.
© The Vancouver Sun 2005