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I have picked BCE.TO stock among telecom service providers in Canada. I have some accumulated notes below posted at Motley Fool Canada's forum.
[Initially I purchased BCE shares over Rogers Communications for a simple reason; Bell Canada was the main competitor with Ericsson. I had worked for Ericsson and former Bell employee, who switched to Ericsson, was very competitive or smart. BCE's dividend was also at 4.7%, reasonable high.]
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Both Rogers and Bell offer similar wireless services. However Bell has both Fibe TV and satellite TV. Fiber optics transmission speed is very fast as compared to traditional cables, i.e. fast Internet, too.
Actually Bell could pay for the same TV channels that could be used by both satellite TV and fiber TV, i.e. using a conversion adapter at the satellite or fiber network control centers.
For landline telephony services, they have to lower monthly fees and long distance fees. Otherwise they couldn't compete with low cost providers like magicJack.
VoIP phone [magicJack] has the same quality as traditional Bell's landline phone. The only feature that Bell's phone provided is better was function during power outage. However, almost each family has a cell phone. But not all families could afford a cell phone to each kid.
MagicJack provides free calls to a North America's phone number at low yearly fee, however, their prepaid minutes was a bad option. They didn't provide calls to a calling card number, i.e. kick away many customers.
So, if both VoIP and traditional landline phones offered the same quality of products, why should we pay more?
* Anyways I have some shares of CALL and BCE.
If I remembered correctly, Bell owns long distance cables. It was forced to increase its own phone's long distance rates to make other providers competitive. However Bell makes money by leasing its cables, too.
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I had worked in telecom business. I knew Bell had very competitive work forces. They started installation of fiber optic cables, which would last a few decades later. Rogers had coaxial cables, which are currently better than traditional phone lines for transmission speeds. When the fiber optical lines [some cities have this already] phased in the traditional cables would be considered very slow to users.
Btw, there are many services using high speed Internets.
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Talking about wireless networks, Bell had built their wireless networks decades ago. Rogers also have extensive coverage. It would take substantial amount of capital for new players to cover the same areas. Anyways Bell and Rogers charge roaming fees to other providers.
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2015-04-17
> Bell today announced it now serves 1 million IPTV customers, making Fibe TV and FibreOP TV among the fastest growing product lines in Bell's 135-year history. With both next-generation IPTV and national Satellite TV, Bell has quickly become the second-largest television provider in Canada with more than 2.65 million TV customers.<
I think, Bell's Fibe TV service would the near TV future. IP TV with abundant channels around the world.
Source: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bells-fibe-tv-fibreop-tv-170000795.html
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Btw, Netflix offers Internet movies. This could be offered by Bell as well as Rogers. Those were Internet TV. Just applications on their Fibe TV box to decode those movies messages or using Internet as Netflix. Bell had paid for movies used by satellite and Fibe TV already. Fibe TV is new, thus they could upgrade Fibe boxes to offer those.
Satellite TV is more complicated as it involves satellite networks, which I have no ideas.
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I'm not a subscriber of Netflix services. I heard that they have offered movies at low subscription fee based on Internet streaming to your TV.
I am not a fan of movies. I preferred to watch local news such as CBC, CTV, and CP 24. Thus local TV providers like Bell provides those.
Speaking of IP technology used by Netflix to stream movies to your TV, it's not that hard to implement. Thus other TV providers like Bell could do the same. IP TV or Internet movies by Netflix are the same, i.e. sending TV or movies signals in IP packets to the TV to decode and to display. Bell and Rogers had their boxes. Bell offers Fibe TV using IP TV technology. Thus Bell and Rogers could do more with their boxes than Netflix, which only relies on Internet protocols offered by a TV. Perhaps some basic communications [protocol] used between TV/movies control center and your TV needed.
Netflix's Internet TV is not a disrupted technology as well as not unbreakable patents to protect its markets. It was there earlier, thus more market shares initially.
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The only thing Bell should improve is pricing accordingly based on each city. Local cable TV often offers better bundle packages as compared to Bell. Bell sale staff at local office couldn't offer promotional package. You would have to call the promotion office by yourself. The package provided by promotion office was competitive, not cheaper than their local cable providers, e.g. some more channels on TV, some less on Internet speed.
Another thing was multi-cultural channels. I recalled that many Vietnamese stayed with Rogers because of SBTN [Saigon Broadcasting TV Networks] from California, USA. Anyways Bell should poll their customers for key channels, e.g. most watch channel by Italian, Chinese, Latin American, etc. I guess, they have offered tons of US channels.
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What do you think about Netflix with around $7/month and Bell around $20/month for movies package? I guess, all customers would jump to Netflix.
Bell should lower their movies package to around $8-$9/month. The only advantage was “user doesn't have to switch around to access Netflix then Bell TV”, i.e. all at one place. I guess, movies are about the same with Netflix and Bell.
Anyways Bell could compete with Netflix by many ways.
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Btw, the conversion box to convert data between satellite TV, Internet TV and Fibe TV is not a hard thing to do for a technology company. However, buying conversion boxes from a company would help to stay away from patent fights. The box provider would be working on the patent issues.
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It's weird that Rogers also have hybrid-fiber optical connecting to coaxial cable to offer max speed of 200Mb/s.
Bell with fiber cable to your home [Sudbury has this] could offer only 175Mb/s.
It seems to me that Bell is lagging behind with fiber optical investment.
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Anyways I haven't tried Rogers' new Internet. However when I was in Toronto with Bell's fiber optical cables under the side walk, my 2Mb [copper in door] with Bell was very fast. It was faster than a technical support's computer network. We did open a support page at the same time. I got it earlier than him!
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I've been reading articles to compare the Bell Internet and Rogers Internet, I found this note
> TeDD13: especially for someone like me who is from Russia and could have got a 50/10 package in Russia for $17/month (all market packages in Russia are unlimited). Dedicated fibers to your home is about $50…<
Source: http://communityforums.rogers.com/t5/forums/forumtopicpage/board-id/Getting_connected/thread-id/14264/page/2<
* What's wrong with our Internet service in Canada? I guess, fiber cable costs the same. Perhaps labor costs to run cables/fiber were less expensive in Russia.
Netflix ranks Bell Internet faster than Rogers.
Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/netflix-speed-rankings-place-bell-1st-rogers-last-1.2639965
Anyway the above article showed that an ISP could allocate Internet [communication/download] capacity to a service provider like Netflix. Thus, having 200Mbs does not mean that you could download or view movies at that speed.
Perhaps that's why I found that Bell Internet was faster. Even the current Cogeco cable Internet I'm using is 15 Mbs, I found it somehow slower than 5 Mbs that I was used to with Bell Internet. [I'll switch to Bell later anyways for TV channels, which my children wanted.]
* I don't know how Bell ran their twisted cooper pair cables from each house, and connected those to a regional hub, and then to the main networks. I don't know what equipment they've used at those locations.
* I also don't know how Rogers or Cogeco ran cables and connected to a hub and main Internet hubs. Anyways I saw the cables connected each house together as a serial connection. Thus many households would share the same cable bandwidth.
* Anyways cable companies have said that they have provided faster Internet, thus I have searched and read a few articles. Finally I haven't figure out why Bell Internet was faster!
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2015-04-25
Perhaps Bell has the mindset as the monopoly since the early days in telecom. [They said Bell employees have the attitude as "I am Ma Bell. I am the monopoly."] BCE had
1. Monopoly in landline phone. However the VoIP low cost providers have surfaced to take over.
2. Monopoly in long distance cables, but CTRC has forced them to raise their own long distance rates for other to compete.
3. Had Bell Northern Research and Northern Telecom [Nortel], which were very competitive. However Nortel has been spun off and purchased by Ericsson. BCE no longer has a development edge in telecom sector.
4. Built the wireless telecom in early days. However Rogers and Telus have surfaced. I heard that CRTC is considered to force the Big Three to lease out their networks for virtual network providers. It'll come one day.
5. Having DSL as a competitive edge against cable Internet due to done investment in landline phone's copper wires. Cable companies have caught up and offered higher Internet speeds as advertised.
6. Bell and Rogers have installed fiber optical cables to increase the Internet speeds.
-> According to Rogers' web site, the through put of the coaxial cable is higher than twisted copper pairs. Thus fiber-cable could offer higher Internet speed.
-> It seems to me the original investment of Bell on cooper wires would be obsolete in a decade, i.e. Bell's monopoly gone.
7. Satellite TV and cable TV are comparable. Satellite TV could be used by residents in remote towns easily. [I like satellite TV, but it doesn't others are the same.]
8. Movies and TV channels have been completed by low cost Internet providers like Netflix. Bell TV has to lower fees or offer some things unique.
9. As advertised, commercial videos have been moving from TV channels to Internet sites like YouTube and Facebook. Even though people like to watch TV, but this is a real threat
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