It’s been about a month since wireless number portability kicked in for consumers in Canada, and in the words of analyst Lawrence Surtees, “Guess what? The sky hasn’t fallen.”
Surtees, VP and principal analyst of communications research for IDC Canada Ltd. of Toronto, said that the affects of the change were not likely to be abrupt or seen immediately since the Canadian wireless market is dominated by two- and three-year plans and hefty termination fees.
Surtees said that while providers dislike any change that could lead to increased churn, the portability option “probably helps stimulate [wireless] substitution, and that ends up having a beneficial revenue impact for the wireless providers.”
Canada is about two years behind the United States in terms of wireless substitution rates, Surtees noted, so it probably will be two to three years before the impact of allowing consumers to port wireline numbers to wireless will be fully revealed.
Telus Mobility declined to offer any comment about how portability is going or related marketing efforts. Rogers did not respond to a request for comment, and Bell Canada referred questions to the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association, the country’s equivalent of CTIA.
“Everything has been working as it was planned to work, and there have been no major upsets in the actual system,” said Mark Choma, director of communications for CWTA. He said he had no statistics to report thus far on portability, but that the next couple of quarterly reports from Canadian carriers would shed light on how customers have reacted to the ability to port their numbers. Choma added that as portability approached, CWTA did see a spike in visits to a CWTA Web site set up to educate consumers about the coming change.
Marketing push
Surtees said that in the weeks approaching March 14, some of the country’s wireless providers started new marketing efforts. While the development of new technologies and services has continued separate from portability, he added, “portability definitely makes customer retention front and center. So meanwhile, these plans and services are developing, and a company that gets the marketing of it, targeting the right thing for the right demographic . is going to be in a position to win more than if portability wasn’t there.”
Rogers reiterated earlier announcements that its subscribers will be able to make free calls among Rogers wireless and wireline customers, much as AT&T has done with its new Unity plans that encompass wireless and wireline use. Bell Mobility also has a similar Bell to Bell calling offer.
Rogers is the first North American carrier to offer live video calling via its HSDPA network, enlisting the help of Canadian-born William Shatner to promote the service. Rogers has introduced a new suite of services that includes access to Youtube.com videos, while Bell has been pushing the fact that it has a new pay-per-view movie service for owners of 3G handsets, featuring full-length films. In late March, Rogers rolled out a music-on-demand service that offered both pay-per-download and subscription music service, a first for Canada.
Bell Canada bombshell
Besides the buzz on portability and new services, Bell Canada dropped a bombshell this week when it confirmed that it is in talks with a group of Canadian pension funds and private-equity company Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Co. to take the telco private. The pension funds include the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Canada’s Public Sector Pension Investment Board.
Surtees compared Bell Canada to General Motors or AT&T in the U.S., and said that the impact of a change in the company’s ownership structure is still up in the air and depends on “if a deal gets done, how it gets done, and who or whatever the owners are, what they want to do.” He added that some sort of change is likely and the extent of the change depends on whether the company is kept intact or broken into its various pieces, including wireless operations, which could be acquired by other players.
