Musings from BCE
Lost amid BCE Inc.'s third-quarter results yesterday and its move to
eliminate more than 5,000 employees, there were several interesting tidbits
from CEO Michael Sabia. Among them was BCE's take on fiber to the home - a
technology being aggressively pursued by Verizon and SBC in the U.S. While
conceding it's intriguing, Sabia said BCE remains committed to fiber to the
node and efforts to ensure its “last-mile” copper connection to the home is
optimized. He contends this will give Bell Canada the 20MB or so of capacity
it needs to deliver digital video and other “value-added” services to
consumers. The counter argument is this approach is flawed because it will
take at least 25MB to give consumers video-on-demand, three channels of
digital TV, data access and other services. If this view is accurate, there
are analysts who strongly believe the cablecos will have advantage with
their upgraded digital plants. If digital video and TV are the new
high-speed “killer apps”, they contend it will be the cablecos who could
dominate the “triple play” or “quadruple play” market.
