CRTC approves 'regional terrestrial PPV service' on BEV

During the hockey season in certain province the game won't be shown on TSN or CBC and no available on Center Ice since it's their local team...client then has to order the game in PPV, either a one time thing or in a package

That applies for clients in the Canuks zone, Oilers, Flames and Senateur

Probably what they refer to...
 
Bell has had regional PPV hockey games for awhile now, so I don't think this is what this license is for.
 
It definitely does read as being for IP TV. It does sound like they may be referring to a new piece of hardware capable of receiving the signals, not sure if they're just referring to existing dsl modems. Could BEV send signals via satellite in IP format? Would that consume less bandwidth, and could a new breed of receiver theoretically receive, decode and decompress the signal? Not a techie, so I have no clue how efficient this would be.
 
Yes, no, yes. :)

It's no secret that Bell has been working on IPTV. It's likely that while their IPTV service may but limited strictly to terrestrial subscribers, they may simply be wanting to keep all their TV services under the ExpressVu brand.

How many BEV subs are also Sympatico DSL subs? It may be worth it for them to provide some sort of hybrid solution with a combination of satellite and DSL.

If they start an IPTV service bundled with a DSL offering, I certainly hope the data rate consumed by the IPTV is counted against someones BW cap.
 
Didn't this used to be called OTA pay TV? This is an idea that was tried and abandoned in Major US cities during the 1980s. (It was widely hacked on both sides of the border.) Maybe EV is going to try it with digital signals.
 
There are around 1.9 million DSL Sympatico subscribers (IIRC; most recent numbers are at bce.ca); and 1.8 million Satellite ExpressVu subscribers.

The Internet folks are in Ontario and Quebec only; the Bell Satellite folks are national. Bell also has, in relative terms, a handful of customers on VDSL TV in Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa. (That product has been a complete disaster costing tens of millions of dollars more to launch and promote than it produces in gross revenue, never mind after costs.)

However, Bell currently has 0 (that is, zero) customers on IPTV who are also paying Sympatico (or any other form of) customers. When Bell launches IPTV -- the latest financial call/release said they'd "complete development" in 2007 -- so maybe later this year or early next year -- it would make sense to lock in existing Sympatico customers with Bell IPTV customers.

Bell will leverage its investment in satellite TV to launch IPTV. Alas, this means all ExpressVu customers outside of Ontario and Quebec -- and, more realistically, outside of Toronto and Montreal -- will be paying an "IPTV tax" to help Bel fund the launch of a non-satellite service they'll never be offered because Bell DSL doesn't reach Kelowna.
 
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