Monopoly Watch Canada

After leading the mobile world in price increases and poor customer service, Rogers has recently announced a single rate for roaming. Though obviously good news for consumers, Canada remains a world laggard in terms of choice and quality of services.

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Bert Archer

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail Published on Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2010 4:48PM EST Last updated on Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2010 10:34AM EST

Ask any Canadian who travels the world on business and he'll tell you he has issues with his wireless plan. Both in terms of technology and pricing, Canada has been lagging behind both Europe and the United States for years. But two recent developments offer some hope: It may now be possible to take your phone and laptop on the road and not run up phone bills that dwarf your mortgage payments. The introduction of a new roaming phone, and new Wi-Fi pricing from one of the country's biggest wireless carriers, suggest the arrival at last of affordable service for foreign trips.

Tuesday, Rogers announced new travel packs for its Rocket Stick, letting customers avoid roaming charges. The stick is a small wireless device that plugs into your laptop's USB port and picks up cell signals to make everywhere you go a hot spot. It has been expensive even in Canada, but until this month, it was even more costly on the road: With roaming charges, data in the U.S. cost $3 to $6 a megabyte. But now, Rogers has decided to lead Canadian wireless companies by eliminating roaming charges. With a one-year contract (the minimum Rogers offers), you get the stick for $49.99 and a flex plan for $45 a month that gives you up to 500 megabytes a month. If you use more, you automatically get bumped up to a $60 plan with one gigabyte a month. (The stick is free with a three-year commitment.)

But with free Wi-Fi proliferating throughout the Western world, does the convenience and performance warrant even the $60 charge? In Miami Beach this week, I first tried my usual hunt for free Wi-Fi. As is often the case, it took me a while to find the nearest Starbucks with a connection (some of the chain's locations have free Wi-Fi for customers with a rewards card). In a different part of town, I had to stop a couple of times to try to detect a signal, finding one after about half an hour at a French café that was just closing, at which I had to buy a palmier ($2.95) as rent for the table for the 10 minutes it took the staff to close the place around me.

Once I inserted the stick, though, everything changed. The obvious benefit of the stick is convenience: Anywhere you lay your laptop, that's your office. On a lovely mid-February day, I was able to sit by a fountain and check my e-mail.

But the action seemed a little sluggish, so I stopped in at another café, which has its own free Wi-Fi, to test the speeds. Using both speedtest.net and speakeasy.net, sites that test the upload and download speed of your connection, during the course of about 90 minutes, I learned the stick can be as much as four times slower for downloading than free Wi-Fi. If you're checking e-mail with no attachments, it won't make much difference. But anything heftier, and you may start to get antsy and cast about for the nearest Starbucks.

So is it worth it? It depends on the work you do. Speed versus convenience. Unfortunately, you still can't have it all. Though data transfer is an issue, for most of us, voice calls are the real killer. You can get packages from the big carriers that cut down on extortionate roaming fees, but you pay for the privilege. A small Vancouver company, Roam Mobility, is the first company in Canada that offers global SIM cards, which allow low roaming charges (20 to 40 cents a minute) and free incoming calls almost anywhere in the world.

“It's fantastic,” says Rushi Raja, who travels for his Montreal textile importing company and has been using Roam for two months. He used to get different SIM cards for his most popular destinations, including Germany and Britain, but they expired after a couple of months, and he had to update his contacts with new phone numbers. With Roam, which is pay-as-you-go with online and text top-ups, Raja now has just two numbers, one a British number, the other a U.S. number, neither of which expires. His roaming charges, which were made up almost entirely of his office calling him on the road, have gone from between $400 and $500 a month to almost nothing, he says.

Though Raja reports no problems using the service, my own test in the southern U.S. threw up several. For instance, you can't call toll-free numbers (which made tracking a late UPS package very difficult). To get free incoming calls, people have to call you on a British number and pay the long-distance rates. (You also get a U.S. number, but incoming calls cost 20 cents on that one.) About 10 per cent of my calls simply never went through. Most annoyingly, if you're silent for more than about 20 seconds (on hold, for example), you'll get a message telling you to press 1 to maintain the connection. If you press 1 before the end of the message, however, it'll disconnect you. Twice, it disconnected me even when I pressed 1 after the message.

Roam chief executive officer Emir Aboulhosn says it is working on most of these issues, including adding a Canadian number to the phone. But for many corporate travellers, cost is the real issue, and here Roam is already doing well. Five days of travel with an ordinary volume of calls (something I would never have considered with regular roaming charges), including several hour-long calls in and out, ended up costing me about $14. There were some annoyances, a good deal of frustration with dropped calls and other irregularities, but things ultimately worked out, and for these prices, it's hard to complain.

Once again, you can't quite have it all, but at least now you can have it cheap.

Special to The Globe and Mail

Do you have feedback or business travel questions? E-mail roadwork @ globeandmail.

 

 

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Rogers Communications is looking to data revenue on smartphones for growth

By Luann Lasalle (CP) – Feb 17, 2010

MONTREAL — Rogers Communications Inc. (TSX: RCI.B) sees revenue growth in Internet surfing, texting and downloading software on smartphones as customers talk less, but do more on their devices.

We see a ton of room for that growth to continue," president and CEO Nadir Mohamed said Wednesday after Rogers reported a $310-million profit in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Mohamed said it's just a matter of time before basic cellphones are eclipsed by smartphones, now 31 per cent of the company's subscriber base.

Going forward, in a couple of years what you won't see is anything other than smart devices and devices that can do all kinds of stuff," he told media in a conference call.

Data revenue increased 45 per cent in the quarter versus the same period a year ago. Overall, Toronto-based Rogers said data revenue comprises about 24 per cent of its wireless revenues.

It's absolutely the growth engine of the wireless business," said division president Rob Bruce.

Rogers activated about 400,000 additional smartphones, mainly Apple's iPhone, Research In Motion's BlackBerry and Google's Android devices.

Despite future optimism for growth in its wireless business, Rogers' shares were down almost five per cent Wednesday on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The share price lost $1.70 to close at $32.82 on 6.9 million traded.

Analysts noted that Rogers' guidance for 2010 was on the conservative side with the company saying profit is expected to be up two to seven per cent.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Jonathan Allen said he expected more optimistic" guidance.

However, given the number of moving parts (economy, competition, restructuring) we believe RCI chose a more conservative range, Allen wrote in a note to clients.

With a low bar set this year, we believe RCI should come at the high end of the range, and RCI shares should benefit from building quarterly momentum," he wrote.

For the quarter ended Dec. 31, the cable and wireless company said its profit amounted to 51 cents per share and contrasted with a net loss of 22 cents per share, or $138 million, in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Revenue was in line with analyst estimates, which rose four per cent to $3.06 billion, up from $2.94 billion in 2008.

Adjusted profit, which is closely watched by analysts, was ahead of expectations at 61 cents per share - up from 26 cents per share a year earlier.

Rogers is competing with established players Bell (TSX:BCE) and Telus (TSX:T) and also with new cellphone company Wind Mobile.

Toronto-based Mobilicity and Quebecor's Videotron (TSX:QBR.B) will also be up and running in the coming months, providing more competition.

We feel good about our position," said Mohamed. That's not to say new players won't come in and take share, obviously. We certainly have a game plan and are going to execute it using our strengths."

He also predicted that wireless and fibre wireline networks will converge and consumers won't notice any difference when on different devices.

Deloitte Canada analyst Duncan Stewart said most users probably won't see a lot of difference, aside from scale, between Rogers, Bell (TSX:BCE) and Telus (TSX:T).

He noted that revenue from wireless data will probably be more than 50 per cent in three to four years.

We are seeing a genuine move in traffic away from voice and towards data," said Stewart, director or technology, media and telecommunications.

At the end of the fourth quarter, Rogers had just under 8.5 million subscribers to its wireless services. Average revenue per user, from both pre-paid and post-paid wireless accounts, slipped to $63.23 from $63.79.

Allen said Rogers Wireless added 109,000 postpaid net subscribers, below his 128,000 estimate.

Now that we've seen all three national carriers report, the postpaid market share numbers stack up exactly equal: 109,000 postpaid adds for Rogers and Telus, and 110,000 for Bell."

In the cable and Internet divisions, the number of subscribers continued to grow, but Rogers said the rate slowed as consumers tightened their spending due to the weaker economy and higher unemployment, particularly in Ontario where 90 per cent of its cable subscribers reside.

In the media division, the company reported operating profits were flat at $30 million compared with the same period last year, as advertising sales began to show a mild pickup.

The media division operates conventional television stations, including Citytv, and specialty cable channels including Sportsnet, along with radio stations, magazines including Maclean's and the Toronto Blue Jays baseball franchise.

Rogers also announced it is hiking its dividend and renewing a stock buyback program that will allow it to cancel up to $1.5 billion worth of its class B shares in the coming year.

The annual dividend rate paid by Rogers will rise to $1.28 per class A voting share and class B non-voting share, or 32 cents per quarter - up from the previous annualized rate of $1.16 per share.

Rogers owns Canada's largest wireless phone network, which operates as Rogers and Fido, as well as major cable, Internet, publishing and broadcast businesses.

Copyright © 2010 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

 

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Smart-phone sales pad Rogers’ wallet

The GazetteFebruary 17, 2010

Rogers Communications Inc., the country’s largest wireless carrier, reported a strong fourth-quarter performance Wednesday, with a boost from sales of smart phones, and raised its annual dividend by 10 per cent to $1.28 a share.

Earnings were $310 million, or 51 cents a share, compared with a loss of $138 million after restructuring charges a year earlier. Revenue grew by four per cent to $3.06 billion.

Rogers said it added 109,000 net subscribers in the latest quarter, slightly less than expected, and roaming revenues were lower because of the slack economy. But data revenue growth was up 45 per cent from a year earlier.

“Our early 3G and smart-phone investments are clearly paying off," Rogers said.

Growth in the cable division, including Internet and digital cable services, has begun to slow despite the launch of several new products, Rogers added.

Analysts said Rogers will face more competition in wireless over the next year, with new entrants and new products from Telus and BCE, leading to pressure on its margins.

© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette

 

 

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