Canadian Heritage committee  No, no one had to give anything back.

Canadian Heritage committee  We did overdiscount some people and underdiscount others. We corrected the overdiscounted going forward, but they got to keep the overdiscount they had received.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you. One of the things we see is that a lot of bundling such as you've described increases the level of customer service that customers get, because if you were a poor service provider and you lost someone's telephone account, that was of course terrible, but now, if you annoy a customer, you can lose their wireline phone, their Internet, their cellphone, their video service.

Canadian Heritage committee  So it's important for companies to provide better service. I think you see the level of customer service at our company. We're investing more and more in it all the time. The other thing I'd like to say is just as historical context. Mr. Angus went back to the beginnings of the Internet.

Canadian Heritage committee  As I mentioned in my remarks, you have Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV. These are all sophisticated television operators coming into Canada with no Canadian content requirements whatsoever. One of the things that vertical integration can do is try to keep the regulated Canadian system with its Canadian content obligations robust.

Canadian Heritage committee  Mr. Hennessy used the term “structural separation”, which is not a concept that I endorse, because that implies that you set up two separate companies and stuff like that. It is very common in commercial agreements to have clauses in the contract that govern where that information can go, who can look at it, and what it can be used for.

Canadian Heritage committee  I guess my favourite example is when we started broadcasting Blue Jay games on the cellphone and no one else in North America was doing it. We were asked, “Why are you the first company in North America doing it?” We said, “Well, if you own the team, the stadium, the broadcaster, and the cellphone company, it's not that hard.”

Canadian Heritage committee  I agree with Michael that when someone broadcasts a webisode over a mobile phone, there is a broadcaster. If there's a website that's sending that program out, there's a broadcaster, and if someone collects those shows together and makes a decision whether to buy them and send them down the pipe, that person is a distributor.

Canadian Heritage committee  I think Michael's right. I assume it's a matter of the arithmetic.

Canadian Heritage committee  I would agree with that. One of the things we were arguing about during that whole period was that the broadcast networks were saying: we have no business, we're going bankrupt, these networks are worthless. Now that Shaw has paid $2 billion for Global, and Bell paid more than that for CTV, it appears that we were right; that these networks still had some value.

Canadian Heritage committee  The competition between the regulated system and the unregulated system is getting to be quite important. We've seen in the U.S. recently, in the last quarter, about a quarter of a million fewer broadcast television subscriptions. That's not because cable has moved to satellite or cable has moved to IPTV; the whole system has seen a decrease.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon to you and members of the committee. My name is Ken Engelhart, senior vice-president, regulatory, for Rogers Communications Inc. I am pleased to appear before you today to discuss issues related to private television ownership and new viewing platforms in the Canadian broadcasting and communications sector.

Canadian Heritage committee  No, the OECD did say that, but I have to say, in fairness to my American friends, that I think the OECD study is somewhat badly flawed. The measure that I think is more appropriate is average revenue per minute. When you look at that, Canada is one of the ten lowest-priced countries in the world for cellphone service.

Canadian Heritage committee  Absolutely. As I said to Madame Lavallée, there has to be a balance. We're not saying the value chain shouldn't be preserved. We're not saying there should be no copyright payments, or no fees, but there has to be a balance. Otherwise, we're going to drive consumers off the regulated system and onto the unregulated platforms, and that's going to be bad for everyone.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, thank you. I wholeheartedly agree with your comments. The other point that I think people might not be picking up on is that we have today 96% of our revenue coming from linear television, and 96% of our costs from linear television, but 10%, 20%, 30%--and increasing--of the viewing on the on-demand platforms....