Cogeco creating public WiFi hotspots from people’s homes

Cogeco Cable Inc. has quietly rolled out home spotting, or the use of multi-signal routers in people's homes to provide both private WiFi signals to residents and separate public signals to visitors or those in the vicinity, according to CEO Louis Audet. Audet said in phone interview that Cogeco “started doing it in a modest way” a few months ago. The Wire Report reported in July 2014 that while service providers in the United States and Europe have been making use of the technology, the practice had yet to take off in Canada. Audet expressed Cogeco’s interest in home spotting at the time. Though he would not provide further details about the rollout when asked on Wednesday, Audet said the purpose of the technology was to help retain customers. “This is a nice-to-have retention tool. I know, for other operators, they consider it to be a top priority, and I respect that. For us, it’s a retention tool, and we’re building it slowly,” he said. Audet also talked about the possibility of Cogeco launching wireless service as a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), which the company said it was considering in the past. He said it is not a priority for Cogeco, though it would be something the company would be interested in if the conditions were right. “The interest we’ve expressed is genuine, but it’s not a burning subject with us. If the circumstances — regulatory in particular — turn out to be favourable, then we would like to do it,” he said. “And if they don’t, we’ll find other things to do.” He said that if “reasonable, regulated rates” emerge out of the CRTC’s decision on the wireless wholesale hearing it held last fall, or out of a future proceeding, then “we’ll take advantage of them.” “If it’s good, we take advantage of it. If it’s not, then we don’t lose sleep over it.” Audet said Cogeco will not participate in the upcoming AWS-3 or 2500 MHz spectrum auctions. “We have resolved a while ago that we were unwilling to make the sacrifices that would lead to launching a wireless phone company,” he said, pointing to the struggle of new entrants to the Canadian wireless market as a reason. Public Mobile was bought out by Telus Corp. in 2013, while Mobilicity is in a court-monitored bankruptcy process. “We have concluded a while ago, it must be six years ago now, that we did not want to put ourselves in the position where it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to succeed,” Audet said. Also on Wednesday, Cogeco released its first-quarter results, reporting that it lost 8,465 TV customers in the three-month period ended Nov. 30, compared to the 9,093 it lost in in the same period a year earlier. In a conference call with analysts earlier in the day, Audet said the losses of cable subscribers have now “essentially stabilized,” and that this occurred “even without the help of TiVo,” referring to Cogeco’s launch of a TiVo service in Canada in November, which the company hopes will help curb TV subscriber losses. In the phone interview, Audet said that competition from IPTV products, offered by Canadian telcos such as BCE Inc., pose more of a challenge than cord-cutting. “From our vantage point, the main culprit is competition; it’s not cord-cutting. In our view, we are experiencing very little cord-cutting, but we are experiencing people moving to the competition,” Audet said. “Hence, the interest we had in launching a really novel form of offering the video service, which is TiVo,” he said, noting the service integrates linear, recorded, pay and over-the-top (OTT) content, including that offered by Netflix Inc. Audet said Cogeco would also like to offer Bell’s CraveTV, Rogers Communications Inc. and Shaw Communications Inc.’s Shomi, and Quebecor Inc.’s Illico service. While he said information on how the negotiations are going is confidential, Audet added that it’s important to offer these services because “our job is to offer the whole range of options to the consumer, who then chooses what he wants.” “If we can make it easy for him, that every TV set in his home or his tablet or his smartphone can receive anything that’s out there, whether it’s on cable or over-the-top, then we’ve made that customer’s life a lot easier,” he said. “So if it’s Shomi, fine. If it’s Club Illico in French, fine.” In the same quarter, the company gained 18,535 Internet service subscribers, an increase from the 10,452 it gained during the same quarter last year. It reported revenue of $497 million, up from $475 million last year, with a profit of $56.7 million, up from $49.7 million a year earlier. — With reporting by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca and editing by Derek Abma at dabma@thewirereport.ca

Cogeco creating public WiFi hotspots from people’s homes

News | January 14, 2015

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Cogeco creating public WiFi hotspots from people’s homes

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