Peter Wilson
Sun
CREDIT: Ray Smith, Victoria Times Colonist Calgary-based Shaw Communications CEO Jim Shaw announces the Victoria launch of its Internet phone service, its first VoIP service to B.C.
In a direct invasion of Telus’s home territory, Internet phone service from Calgary-based Shaw Communications launched Wednesday in Victoria.
This is the first move of Shaw’s $55-a-month voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) service — already established in Edmonton and Calgary — to British Columbia.
Telus is still testing its own residential VoIP service and has yet to announce a date for the launch.
Shaw president Peter Bissonnette said the company will be entering the Vancouver market soon, although no specific date has been given.
“It’s our largest market and we want to make sure that all of the things that we need to do before we go in there are done absolutely right,” said Bissonnette, in an interview from Victoria.
Like most VoIP services, Shaw Digital Phone offers unlimited long distance to North America along with voicemail, call forwarding, call waiting, call display, call return and three-way calling.
Subscribers can use their own phones and transfer their old home phone number from Telus. That transfer takes four days, but has taken longer recently as a result of the Telus labour dispute.
If you get a new number, Shaw promises that the phone number transfer will take just one day.
At $55 a month — if you’re already a Shaw subscriber — the service is substantially more expensive than the likes of Vonage at $40 and Primus at $30.
However, Bissonnette said that his service is different in that it operates on its own digital network, set up specifically for VoIP so that there is no competition from other traffic.
“It’s a carrier grade service, so quality is a part of that service,” said Bissonnette.
As well, said Bissonnette, Shaw offers enhanced 911 and service from Shaw technicians.
“In the case of Vonage, they don’t send a technician out any time day or night or on the weekends, and that’s all included in that price,” said Bissonnette.
Bissonnette would not give out subscriber figures for its Edmonton and Calgary operations, saying those would be released with Shaw’s year-end quarterly report next week.
“I would characterize it as being a tremendous response.”
A recent report by the Seaboard Group said there will be 418,000 VoIP subscribers in Canada (out of a base of 14 million phone users) by the end of 2005 and that, 250,000 of those will belong to cable companies like Shaw. By the end of 2008, SeaBoard predicts there will be four million VoIP subscribers.
Along with Vonage and Primus, other Canadian providers offering service in B.C. include Yak, Commwave, AOL TotalTalk and BabyTel. So far neither Telus nor Bell Canada offer a residential VoIP service.
Jim Johannsson, Telus director of new service development, said that Telus is still in the process of developing a service that the company believes will live up to the standard that it sets with its present wireline offering.
“Our whole objective here is not to introduce a bare bones telephone service for voice over IP, but to try to innovate our way to a richer communications experience selling together the phone, the cellphone, the TV and the Internet,” said Johannsson.
Johannsson added that his advice to consumers was to take a good hard look at various VoIP offerings to make sure they get what they want.
© The Vancouver Sun 2005
