The Total Telecom office was rocked this week by the revelation that Die Hard, arguably the greatest Christmas film of all time, is not even a Christmas film at all, as far as 66% of respondents in a Virgin Media Ireland survey are concerned.
Admittedly, Die Hard contains a lot more gunfire, swearing, destruction, and general peril than a ‘traditional’ Christmas film, but there is no escaping these irrefutable facts: It is set at Christmas time during an office Christmas party that happens to be rudely interrupted by a sophisticated group of armed robbers. In addition, there are loads of references to Christmas in the script, and Let it snow! accompanies the closing credits. I mean, how much more Christmassy can you get?
Clearly the line between a Christmas film and a non-Christmas film is more blurry for some than others – particularly after a mulled wine or two. Given that here at Total Telecom we live and breathe telecoms, it naturally got us thinking about the ever-blurring line between a telco and a non-telco.
Fresh evidence was served up this week when Canadian cableco Shaw Communications agreed a C$1.6 billion (€1 billion) takeover deal for mobile network operator Wind Mobile.
Shaw may have started out as a TV provider, but by the time Wednesday’s deal was announced it was offering a variety of telco services, including voice, broadband, and WiFi.
"The acquisition of Wind provides Shaw with a unique platform in the wireless sector which will allow us to offer a converged network solution to our customers that leverages our full portfolio of best-in-class telecom services," said Shaw CEO Brad Shaw.
Wind has around 940,000 customers in Ontario, British Columbia and A lberta, and holds 50 MHz of mobile spectrum in each of the three regions. It is in the process of rolling out LTE infrastructure, and this summer sold off AWS-1 frequencies in Manitoba and Saskatchewan to MTS-Allstream and SaskTel respectively, with a view to ploughing the proceeds into 4G
It is worth remembering that Shaw acquired a substantial amount of AWS-1 spectrum in 2008, but, after not doing a lot with it, sold it again to Rogers Communications, one of Canada’s big three.
For whatever reason, the timing was not right the first time around for Shaw to go ‘full telco’, but since then, mobile data, particularly video, has hit the big time, while more consumers are looking for one company to offer them a full suite of bundled services.
A similar blurring is happening south of the border, where AT&T is busy remodelling itself as an all-singing, all-dancing service provider in the wake of its successful DirecTV acquisition.
It’s not necessarily all good news for customers though.
It emerged this week that from late January, DirecTV will raise the cost of its various TV packages from between $1 and $9 per month, while every customer will see their base fee go up by 50 cents.
"Exceeding your expectations is at the core of everything we do. And we understand that getting maximum value is a top priority, which is why we work diligently to keep costs under control. However, due to higher costs of programming, an adjustment in the price of our programming packages is necessary," said DirecTV, on its Website.
This emerged just days after AT&T revealed that the price of some of its U-verse TV packages will also increase in early 2016.
The ongoing convergence of services and business models from the twin planets of telco and cable is one of many areas covered by Total Telecom’s review of 2015, which is out next week. Be sure to check it out.
Elsewhere in telecoms this week, CityFibre stole the headlines on Monday with the £90 million acquisition of Kcom’s national network assets; Serbia cancelled the privatisation of Telekom Srbija; Hutchison’s 3 launched 4G services in Macau; Thailand got its latest spectrum auction underway; and Telenor trumpeted its 200 millionth customer.
Meanwhile, the EU finally reached a deal for its new data protection rules; Vivendi got its own way at Telecom Italia’s board meeting; MTN announced it will challenge the fine imposed on it in Nigeria; and Orange was slapped with a €350 million fine for anticompetitive behaviour in France’s enterprise market.
That about wraps up another week in telecoms. I would end with a pithy quote from Die Hard, but there’s no need to swear in a Friday Review this close to Christmas.
Have a great weekend.
