Evidence of meeting #44 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was market.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:20 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Rajotte
But you say that Shaw has signed up close to 300,000 phone customers. Can I assume some are in Fort McMurray, but primarily in Edmonton, Calgary, and the Lower Mainland?
February 14th, 2007 / 5:20 p.m.
Executive Vice-President, Corporate Affairs, TELUS Communications
That's correct.
5:20 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Rajotte
I think it's safe to say that would fall under the 25% forbearance figure.
5:20 p.m.
Executive Vice-President, Corporate Affairs, TELUS Communications
Well, if you looked at Calgary, Edmonton, and the Lower Mainland and counted our losses to Shaw, as well as the households using wireless only—because in Calgary, Edmonton, and the Lower Mainland we don't serve close to 10% of households because they take wireless only—we'd pretty much be at the 25% threshold in those three cities, give or take. Without getting into the details of what is competitively sensitive, those are the kinds of losses we're seeing.
5:20 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Rajotte
One of the things the cable companies say is, look, in some areas we'll be at the 25% figure and the telecom companies should just be satisfied to live by the 25% because in some markets we'll in fact be at that figure, or are at that figure right now in the case of Fort McMurray. So why not leave that 25% in place?
5:20 p.m.
Executive Vice-President, Corporate Affairs, TELUS Communications
My answer to that is they've had a two-year holiday to get market share, and in that period we've not been able to respond.
It's cold comfort for us to find out we can finally be deregulated, after we've lost so many customers since Shaw entered in February 2005. The real issue is why we weren't deregulated sooner, and it's that 25% threshold that stood in the way.
5:20 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Rajotte
I want to do this from a consumer's point of view in Edmonton. The reality you're facing as a consumer in Edmonton is that you can currently bundle cable, Internet, and television—and television with many different options—under Shaw, whereas as a consumer of Telus you can obviously bundle telephone service, both wireline and wireless, and Internet. I think that is the minister's rationale in going forward—and we'll obviously hear from the minister. It's in situations where you have competition like that where he will allow deregulation to occur. In rural areas, about which Mr. Rota reasonably raised a concern, that's where we will not deregulate. So I think that's one of the points to make.
And in Edmonton, if one moves from Telus to the full bundle Shaw offers, what you're asking for is to be able to contact that customer the next day and say, in the future, look at Telus again as an option.
Would you be willing to do what Mr. Hunter proposed here before? He certainly proposed something with Bell in terms of its satellite service, but you're certainly in favour of win-back, and yet you won't actually benefit from any win-back provisions in any other way, which some have argued Bell benefits from in other ways.
5:25 p.m.
Executive Vice-President, Corporate Affairs, TELUS Communications
On the win-back front, I think there's a little bit of a misconception. People think we can actually win customers back before they switch to Shaw. Practically speaking, that can't happen, and I think Mr. Hunter explained that. The way we find out they're gone is that they've left; it's not before they've left. So it's after they've left that we want to be able to entice them back.
There are CRTC restrictions that prevent us, as you noted, from bundling. Yes, we are able to offer telephone service, Internet, and TV in a package, but we can't offer it at a bundled price because of the bundling restrictions that the CRTC imposes today.
5:25 p.m.
Conservative
5:25 p.m.
Executive Vice-President, Corporate Affairs, TELUS Communications
Basically, that's absolutely correct. So all we want to be able to do is compete.
5:25 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Rajotte
Okay, thank you very much. I appreciate the two of you coming in here today.
We have the presentation from SaskTel, as I said, and we encourage members to read that as well. If you have any further information for the committee, please pass that along to the clerk.
Members, if I could just indulge your time, we do have future committee business at 5:30. I know that some members have left. Frankly, I think we can deal with this within 5 to 10 minutes, as I do have some agreement on some issues.
I'll suspend for a minute here.
[Proceedings continue in camera]