Bell's VDSL Threat to Rogers?
It looks like the folks at UBS Warburg don't think that much of Bell Canada's VDSL push into the apartment building and condo market in Toronto. In a new research report, UBS estimates that Rogers will lose just 6,000 customers to Bell by the end of this year, and only 76,000 by 2010. That represents 0.3% of Rogers' 570,000 multi-unit dwelling, or MDU, customers this year, and 3.4% in 2010. With all the talk about convergence and the triple-threat battle between carriers and cable companies, UBS' forecasts for the Rogers-Bell tete-a-tete are surprisingly modest. It will be interesting to see how UBS and other analysts look at Rogers' push into Internet telephony, which is slated to happen some time next year. Don't be surprised to see Rogers enters into an agreement with Allstream Inc./Manitoba Telecom to give its Internet telephony plans some momentum.
