Shaw’s FreeRange TV first step in transition to IP-based system

Shaw Communications Inc. on Wednesday began publicizing the first phase in a transformation of its television service that it hopes gives consumers reason to choose its TV service over competitors and over the option of having no TV service at all. It announced the availability of an application called FreeRange TV, which Shaw chief operating officer Jay Mehr said will allow the company's TV customers to get the full range of their TV subscriptions on mobile devices within their homes or while out and about. "We think it's a major step forward," he said in a phone interview. "The ability to take everything you subscribe to on your TV, at no extra charge, onto your devices in the home and on your devices on the go in an aggregated, simple, rich experience, we think it's a nice competitive advantage for our customers." According to Shaw's press release, FreeRange is available for Apple Inc.'s iOS devices with version 8.0 or later and Google Inc.'s Android devices running on 4.0.3 and up. It provides users with access to more than 80 live channel feeds, up to 30,000 on-demand titles, a sports link that has Sportsnet and TSN content, and downloadable children's programming. It also includes a link to Shomi streaming services, which Shaw operates jointly with Rogers Communications Inc. The content available to any one customer is dependent on what that customer subscribes to in their Shaw TV packages — either on cable or satellite — and Mehr said this might convince customers not to downgrade their packages when the CRTC starts requiring service providers to offer skinny-basic packages for no more than $25 a month in March. "The advantage of this application is the more TV you buy, the more you get included on demand and on the go," he said. "And so if you were a consumer of just the skinny-basic product ... you actually wouldn't have a lot of content on this device. It would still work and would be functional; it just wouldn't have the richness of experience." He said FreeRange TV might also be enough to prevent some TV subscribers from becoming cord-cutters and convince others who have already cut the cord to come back to the TV system. Asked how FreeRange TV compares to similar competing products, such as Telus Corp.'s Optik on the go, Mehr said: "This is a next-generation experience that we think differentiates ourselves from our competitors." Mehr said FreeRange is based on Comcast Corp.'s X1 platform, which is merely the first step in the full integration of this IP-based technology into Shaw's TV service. He said Shaw's TV customers, before the end of this year, will get an identical experience to that of customers of Comcast's Xfinity TV service in the United States. The Xfinity website indicates that features of X1 service include voice-activated remote controls, an advanced recommendation service based on user habits, a sports function that displays scores and statistics at the side of sports programming being watched, as well as the ability to share private videos to TV sets from a mobile device. The FreeRange TV app has been available since December, though Shaw only started publicizing it on Wednesday. This comes on the heels of Shaw's announcement last month that it had struck a deal to buy Wind Mobile for $1.6 billion. Mehr said the improvements being made to Shaw's TV service fit strategically with its plans to become a mobile-service provider, as well with news from earlier in December that it was improving the speeds of its public WiFi network. "We think it will be a ubiquitous network ... where you're using our network to use any applications you want and then you'll have some really smart applications like this that you can get directly from us," he said. Independent broadcast consultant Kelly Lynne Ashton said FreeRange TV seems like the kind of product that will appeal to consumers, and it appears designed to convince people to stick with their TV subscriptions rather than cut the cord or downgrade their subscription packages. Whether it will achieve these goals is unclear, she added. "It's really hard to predict consumer behaviour right now," Ashton said in a phone interview. Its success, she said, will depend on how well it functions. Ashton said there are so many different video apps available currently — for specific channels, for broadcast distributors and for over-the-top (OTT) services — that it can be confusing. If this app cuts down on the confusion rather than adds to it, FreeRange TV can be a success, she said. "If it's done right, I think it will address the confusions and be the one-stop shop for the consumer," Ashton said. — With reporting by Derek Abma at dabma@thewirereport.ca and editing by Shruti Shekar at sshekar@thewirereport.ca

Shaw’s FreeRange TV first step in transition to IP-based system

Broadcast | January 6, 2016

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