IPTV still plays important role in regional telcos’ growth strategies

MTS Allstream Inc. and Aliant Inc. are still building out their IPTV offerings even as they struggle to maintain local residential telephony market share. Aliant is in the process of rolling out IPTV to approximately 200,000 homes in Atlantic Canada and hopes to achieve that goal by the end of 2007. The company has already established a footprint of about 40,000 homes in the Halifax area and plans to expand to St. John’s this year. Jay Forbes, president and CEO of the Atlantic Canadian telco, refused to provide subscriber figures, and would only say that "we are absolutely delighted with the that this was received in the Halifax marketplace." Despite IPTV’s potential benefits in countering erosion of their voice and data services – Aliant has lost upwards of 30% of the local residential telephony market in Halifax and Charlottetown – the company won’t speed up the pace of IPTV deployment. Meanwhile, MTS Allstream, Manitoba’s incumbent telephone company, has about 51,000 IPTV subscribers (see chart on page 1) but is slowing investment in its IPTV deployment following a decision to conduct a corporation-wide review of operations. A key part of the review is to limit capital expenditures to $270 million over the next two years. Analysts questioned MTS’ IPTV strategy, given it had suffered a 5% loss of local residential subscribers in the past fiscal year. But Kelvin Shepard, newly appointed president of the firm’s Manitoba division, noted the company remains committed to its IPTV network improvement plan. Shepard also maintained that MTS will be able to lure customers with the addition of new services. "When we look at the other investments we’re making in things like rolling out high-definition, which we expect to do later this year, and PVR capability, and some other things, we think we’re going to be very competitive in terms of TV," he stated.

IPTV still plays important role in regional telcos’ growth strategies

Broadcast | February 10, 2006

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