Shaw launches digital phones, Telus offers TV service
Fiona Anderson
Sun
Jim Shaw (left), CEO of Shaw Communications and Peter Bissonnette, president, launch new phone service. Photograph by : Bill Keay, Vancouver Sun
Shaw’s digital phone terminal
The war of the telecommunications titans heated up Wednesday as Shaw Communications Inc. launched its digital telephone service in Vancouver and Telus Corp. volleyed back with news of its Telus TV.
Entering the phone market gives Shaw a “triple-play” of Internet, television and telephone in Vancouver, Shaw’s CEO Jim Shaw said at a news conference.
“With the launch of Shaw digital phone in Vancouver, customers can take care of all their entertainment and communications needs with one phone call to Shaw,” Shaw’s president Peter Bissonnette said. “They also have all of their entertainment and communications services on one bill each month.”
For $65 a month — or $55 for those who already have Shaw cable television or Internet — customers will get unlimited local and North American telephone calls, as well as standard phone features like call display and voice mail.
The price may be higher than Voice-over-Internet-Protocol services — such as Vonage which charges about $40 per month — but the service is better, Bissonnette told reporters after the announcement.
“[Standard VoIP] is an Internet-to-Internet service,” Bissonnette said. “So you actually contend with traffic on the Internet. On our service we actually built a separate network so … it’s not contending with anything.”
“It makes a big difference in terms of quality,” he said. “It’s a consistent, reliable service that we’re offering as opposed to one that relies on computers and on the Internet.”
Shaw already has 90,000 customers signed on to its phone service, which it launched in Calgary last February and in Victoria in October. It hopes to have 200,000 customers by the end of 2006, Jim Shaw said.
More than 11 million people called on the Shaw network over Christmas, and the company now processes 1.5 million calls a day, Bissonnette said.
The telephone service — which Shaw calls digital telephone rather than VoIP service — is delivered through existing telephones by installing a small black box called a digital telephone terminal in the home. The box is owned by Shaw and loaned free of charge to customers.
Customers who are willing to get a new phone number can have the service installed immediately, Bissonnette said. Those who want to keep the number they have will need to wait between four and seven days for the number to be transferred.
The all-in-one price includes 911 and 411 service as well as around-the-clock support.
Shaw also introduced its international calling plan — called Shaw International Direct — to coincide with its Vancouver launch, which came a day before today’s annual shareholders’ meeting. The long distance service enables Shaw customers to dial direct — something they have not been able to do to date — at rates as low as three cents a minute to China and Western Europe.
Shaw anticipates expanding its telephone service to the North Shore, Richmond and Burnaby in April.
Meanwhile Telus announced it was building a $15-million satellite and content distribution centre in an undisclosed location north of the Fraser Valley that will bring customers of its Telus TV — to be launched in B.C. in the second half of 2006 — hundreds of digital channels.
Telus‘ Internet protocol television service had a friendly launch — among friends and family of Telus employees — in Alberta in November. That has led to “spill-over” that has brought subscribers on board, said Fred Di Blasio, Telus vice-president of consumer product marketing. How many people have signed up, Di Blasio would not say.
“We are taking a slow-go approach to our launch. We want to make sure we don’t overwhelm our installation and repair workforce to do the installations properly and serve our customers in a future-friendly manner,” Di Blasio said.
The investment in the satellite centre — called a head end — is part of a $1.8 billion investment in the province in the last three years.
Telus also plans to launch a VoIP telephone service but no potential date has been disclosed, Di Blasio said.
