Bell ExpressVu begins offering new digital channel signals to cable companies

Bell ExpressVu LP plans to begin delivering digital broadcast signals to cable headends for the first time this week in what could become an important revenue stream for the company’s satellite relay distribution business. The upcoming launch of new digital specialty television channels this September has propelled Canada’s largest direct-to-home (DTH) satellite TV operator into its competitor’s territory. While the digital specialty channels have yet to launch, Bell ExpressVu was to begin today beaming signals containing preview reels or simply a channel’s name to cable operators so they can carry out trials and test equipment. "We’re not trying to provide the Bell ExpressVu digital offering to cable companies. It will be quite different from the way cable rolls it out. But we will be using our Nimiq satellite to deliver digital signals to cable headends," points out Terry Snazel, Bell ExpressVu’s VP of technology. "That’s very important because it allows us to create a second revenue stream, which has always been available up until now to Star Choice, and now we’ll be able to get the same benefits as it has." He notes that Bell ExpressVu has signed contracts with at least three digital licensees with multiple channels who are paying the DTH company to deliver their signals to cablecos. That marks a departure in an area historically dominated by Telesat Canada and Canadian Satellite Communications Inc, and currently dominated by Cancom subsidiary Star Choice Communications Inc. Bell ExpressVu has contracts to deliver TVA and other channels in analog, but according to Snazel, that represents a small revenue stream. "For the first time we’re getting into digital distribution for programmers," he notes. Making the signals available to all cablecos represents a sort of technical milestone for Bell ExpressVu which, unlike Star Choice, uses a different technology platform than the majority of cable operators across the country. It follows a technical test with Hamilton ON-based Mountain Cablevision Ltd and another unnamed cable company in early July. In the trial, Mountain Cablevision down-linked digital signals from the Nimiq satellite via an ExpressVu dish at its cable headend, which were then modulated through its cable system and delivered to the television screen to produce pictures. "It’s just like receiving a Star Choice signal," notes Snazel, who says one of the biggest challenges has been to persuade cable companies that ExpressVu can deliver to them quality signals. "We’re very comfortable that it’s not just a flash in the pan with Mountain Cablevision," he adds. "It does work elsewhere." Last week, Bell ExpressVu informed the Canadian Cable Television Association (CCTA) and the Canadian Cable Systems Alliance (CCSA) as well as programmers which channels were on which Nimiq transponder and the technical specifications for receiving them. "We met with the CCTA technical people and non-technical people to see what would be the cable-friendly way of putting signals together so they could take a whole transponder and put it into a cable package," Snazel notes. "…And we’re trying to make it friendly for the programmers as well, so they’ll have their programs together on a transponder. I’d say we were about 95 per cent successful … It’s actually been quite an extensive exercise to maximize the benefit to everyone, but we have nailed down all the channels we’ll be carrying and on which transponder." Bell ExpressVu will not make that information public for another few weeks. "There’s probably a lot of speculation that we’re not prepared," Snazel says. "We are prepared but we’re trying to time the release of the information as properly as we can. We want to inform our competition and the programmers we have contracts with in an organized way first (before going public)."

Bell ExpressVu begins offering new digital channel signals to cable companies

Broadcast | August 15, 2001

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