jfmezei Premium Member join:2007-01-03 Pointe-Claire, QC
1 recommendation |
jfmezei
Premium Member
2011-Mar-21 2:44 am
Bell Canada's financials and UBBBack in the "globe and mail" thread, Rocky and Nauru posted links to the transscripts of Bell Canada telecomnference with financial analysts. Not to pollute the Globe and Mail "redference" thread, I figured I would start a new one to discuss those reports. The links: 3rd quarter: » www.bce.ca/data/document ··· 3_10.pdf4th quarter (call on feb 10 2011): » www.bce.ca/data/document ··· 4_10.pdfWhat is quite clear here is that Bell is ARPU driven. The problem here is that instead of wanting more customers, Bell wants only big spenders, and doesn't mind getting rid of low paying customers since they drive APRU down. This is definitely not competitive when Bell then wants to impose this philosophy on indies by forcing them to emulate BellM's pricing. In a competitive evironment, companies would brag about lowering prices and attracting more customers. (lower ARPU translating to greater market share). But Bell is doing the opposite, shedding customers to retain the more profitable ones. The problem is that Bell would have a very hard time convincing bay street casino analysts and shareholders that lowering ARPU would in the long term be more profitable because it would drive greater growth. The irony here is that by focusing on customers willing to pay more, Bell is also going after customers who would be consuming more bandwidtht and thus contribute more to congestion events. But we all know that congestion is nothing but some excuse to brainwash a naive CRTC. |
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nauru0
Member
2011-Mar-21 2:57 am
Anyone know what NAS means (network access service) in the context of these conference calls? In plain language please... |
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jfmezei Premium Member join:2007-01-03 Pointe-Claire, QC |
jfmezei
Premium Member
2011-Mar-21 3:04 am
I had the same question about NAS. To me it appears to be a fancy word for POTS based services.
It does mean "Network Access Service", and based on what my buddy Mr Google says, it is based on the copper service to a home. But I am not sure how much includes. (for instance, if you are on a CLEC, do the unbundled loop fees contribute to NAS revenus ?).
It would appear that services such as voice mail that are attached to POTS would count towards NAS. (which is why Bell could claim rising ARPU there). |
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The reason Bell counts NAS is because there isn't a 1:1 relationship between telephone numbers and subscribers. You could have 1 phone number aimed at 23 PRI channels, or you could have 5000 phone numbers aimed at 10 DID trunks. |
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1 recommendation |
to jfmezei
As we all suspected, Bell's UBB is actually a REVENUE generator. It is clearly not the end of the world if Bell's UBB was taken away.
"Turning to slide 9, our residential services had an excellent revenue quarter from a data perspective, as well, with data revenue growth of 5%, driven principally by the bandwidth usage revenue being up 83% year-over-year."
This should be posted everywhere and pointed out to at the CRTC's next proceeding. |
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BACONATOR26 |
to jfmezei
Also found this gem in the second transcript:
Maher Yaghi, Desjardins Securities Yes, thank you for taking my question. I just want to maybe talk about your NAS losses in the quarter. You mentioned that you saw some improvement due to a contract signing on the wholesale side. Can you quantify what that contract would have represented in the quarter just so that we can have a better understanding what the underlying fundamentals are in terms of NAS losses on the residential side?
George Cope, Chief Executive Officer, BCE Were not going to disclose the number but let me try to help you a little bit. If you look at our historical decline weve seen in NAS year-over-year, if you were to look back at that, thats generally where we have been and the wholesale transaction helped that. So, you know, if the number looks more than its normally been, you can back into
assume that the retail side of our consumer saw the steady decrease that weve seen historically. And thats probably as far as were going to go on that because its got competitive elements to it for us and for the wholesaler who is doing that work.
So wholesale is a money maker and they still want to get rid of it. Makes no sense to me. |
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resa1983 Premium Member join:2008-03-10 North York, ON |
resa1983
Premium Member
2011-Mar-21 9:28 am
said by BACONATOR26:So wholesale is a money maker and they still want to get rid of it. Makes no sense to me. Putting wholesale out of business would be a bigger money maker (in their minds) as then they could scoop up all those customers and charge like crazy for overages. |
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said by resa1983:said by BACONATOR26:So wholesale is a money maker and they still want to get rid of it. Makes no sense to me. Putting wholesale out of business would be a bigger money maker (in their minds) as then they could scoop up all those customers and charge like crazy for overages. Only assuming they don't lose the customer to cable and they admit cable is strong competition. |
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andyb Premium Member join:2003-05-29 SW Ontario |
to jfmezei
Geist is reading the financials also BCE CEO Cope Says UBB Accounts for Almost All Internet Revenue Gains » www.michaelgeist.ca/cont ··· 697/125/ |
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nauru0
Member
2011-Mar-21 5:59 pm
Nice to see Geist is reading this forum. He has also posted The UBB Deception video on his blog today. » www.michaelgeist.ca/cont ··· 694/196/ |
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jfmezei Premium Member join:2007-01-03 Pointe-Claire, QC |
jfmezei
Premium Member
2011-Mar-22 7:07 am
I guess this is where capitalism meets socialism.
Belll Canada's goal is to enrish its CEO and shareholders and extract as much money from consumers as it can get away with. It doesn't realy have a "social responsability" to the nation. (except perhaps leftovers from the Bell Canada act).
So, when it sees the internet, it isn't interested in providing fixed fee service while other companies like Google will become rich beyond belief. Bell Canada wants in on the act. (as would any large corporation, including cable companies).
As a nation thought should we regard the internet as a public access highway that is critical to the rest of the economy ? Or should this be regarded as a private highway that can be runned any way the onwer wishes ?
The problem with the purely capitalist view is that I am not sure you can really have competition in the internet access business, especially not in the last mile. And without sufficient compeition, the "milk the customers as much as you can" mentality of large corporations will be detrinental to the nation as a whole because our internet will be too costly.
So, if you physically cannot have sufficient compeition to keep prices low enough to make Canada competitive in a global economy, what do you do ? Nationalise last mile (as in australia) ? Regulate it ? Or just pretend there is sufficient competition and let the market loose as the CRTC has been doing ? |
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milnoc
Member
2011-Mar-22 11:37 am
Nationalizing the last mile would work as long as the people involved are dedicated in seeing it work, just like what was accomplished with Hydro Quebec.
Back in the Thirties, the two major Quebec power companies, Montreal Light, Heat and Power and Shawinigan Water & Power Company, colluded together to rig the pricing of electricity. The government had enough of the shenanigans and eventually bought out the two power companies along with many smaller ones, and created a single public utility called Hydro Quebec.
Today, not only do we have one of the most advanced and reliable power grids in the world that we both own and control, we also have some of the lowest electrical rates in all of North America.
Unfortunately, we're back in the same position as back then, but instead of having issues with our electric companies, our issues are now with the telecommunications companies.
The national network I'd like to see implemented would have to be a "dumb pipe" type network where you can feed just about any type of data through the system. Private companies would lease access to the national network (no auctions please) and would be entirely responsible for the type of data flowing through the system (phone, TV, Internet...). They can even encrypt the information any way they'd like so that the government can't access anything specific, ensuring privacy is maintained.
Having the network as a public utility would ensure that all companies, big and small, would have equal access to the network, and no single company would be able to squeeze anyone else out of the system as we've seen with the auctioning off of new cellular spectrum a few years ago. |
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MaynardKrebsWe did it. We heaved Steve. Yipee. Premium Member join:2009-06-17
1 recommendation |
to jfmezei
What *is* galling about this is that Bell and all its officers have a legal responsibility to provide accurate information to the investing public (via the analysts) during these conference calls. There are financial and possible criminal sanctions for not doing so.
Yet these same cretins can stand before the CRTC and spout falsehood after falsehood without repercussions, or if there are possible repercussions that they are never enforced.
It's high time for all testimony before the CRTC to be sworn under oath, with severe penalties for false/misleading statements.
1) Corporate Death Penalty - ignore a CRTC ruling once, get fined $1mm/DAY; ignore the same or another ruling twice, get fined $10MM/DAY retroactive to the date of the first ruling; ignore a new or the same ruling a third time, the corporation's charter is cancelled and corporation is placed in receivership - shareholder's equity wiped out, corporation executives & directors placed on trial for contempt with all penalties payable personally.
2) Powers of Investigation to be added to IC/CRTC mandate - includes audit teams capable of surprise technical inspections, power to demand technical information on-the-spot, power to remove equipment/records for study. penalties for failure to comply are same as 1) above. |
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GNca GeorgeGorillaNET Wireless Broadband Premium Member join:2008-07-12 Minden, ON |
I've been complaining about that for a while too. The equivalent of SarbanesOxley applied through the CRTC would work fine.
Geo |
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El QuintronCancel Culture Ambassador Premium Member join:2008-04-28 Tronna |
said by GNca George:I've been complaining about that for a while too. The equivalent of Sarbanes-Oxley applied through the CRTC would work fine.
Geo Sarbanes-Oxley has been excellent for the financial industry (as much as they like to state otherwise) it forced accountability at all levels. |
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to jfmezei
said by jfmezei:But we all know that congestion is nothing but some excuse to brainwash a naive CRTC. Congestion is the only reason that DPI doesn't fall astray of the criminal code[1]. If traffic was not affecting their network, they are not allowed to diddle it, or intercept it, period. Why this hasn't been pursued criminally, I'll never know. [1]: » laws.justice.gc.ca/eng/C ··· gb:s_184 |
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zygggy join:2009-11-27 Meaford, ON |
zygggy
Member
2011-Mar-22 1:59 pm
Gotta love Georgie and his high priced managerial team...they were bleeding Bell customers for millions through UBB - but oh no it's not enough. So someone, probably Mirko sez "Hey this is great but we can do better - lets stick it to the indies. Call KvF" Idiots. |
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MaynardKrebsWe did it. We heaved Steve. Yipee. Premium Member join:2009-06-17
1 recommendation |
to El Quintron
It's also Shaw being candid with investors and liars to the CRTC. » www.shaw.ca/uploadedFile ··· inal.pdfSlide #5 (numbers at lower left) In the future, we believe our usage based billing plan will enable the further monetization of our Internet business as data usage becomes more prevalent and common amongst our customer base (ie. streaming of video)Slide 19 Over-the-top applications (i.e. Global TV website, Hulu etc.) relating to the viewing of traditional broadcasting will become more common in the future and management of content will help mitigate this risk to our core businessLet's be clear in all this: Monetizing / monetization are code words for "profit centre", and not "cost recovery" or "behaviour modification". |
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to MaynardKrebs
said by MaynardKrebs:What *is* galling about this is that Bell and all its officers have a legal responsibility to provide accurate information to the investing public (via the analysts) during these conference calls. There are financial and possible criminal sanctions for not doing so.
Yet these same cretins can stand before the CRTC and spout falsehood after falsehood without repercussions, or if there are possible repercussions that they are never enforced.
It's high time for all testimony before the CRTC to be sworn under oath, with severe penalties for false/misleading statements.
1) Corporate Death Penalty - ignore a CRTC ruling once, get fined $1mm/DAY; ignore the same or another ruling twice, get fined $10MM/DAY retroactive to the date of the first ruling; ignore a new or the same ruling a third time, the corporation's charter is cancelled and corporation is placed in receivership - shareholder's equity wiped out, corporation executives & directors placed on trial for contempt with all penalties payable personally.
2) Powers of Investigation to be added to IC/CRTC mandate - includes audit teams capable of surprise technical inspections, power to demand technical information on-the-spot, power to remove equipment/records for study. penalties for failure to comply are same as 1) above. Agreed. The problem with the CRTC right now, is it's basically a GIGO system. If the Bell's and the Shaw's are able to tell them whatever lies they want to make things happen, then it only makes sense that the CRTC spits out the wrong rulings. Once in a while they do get things right, like the recent change making switching ISP's as easy as switching telephone providers. The problem is the calculator that is the CRTC is constantly getting told the wrong equations to the problems, and so they spit out an answer that makes sense to the problem they are presented with. Legal accountability and documented statements based in truth are what needs to happen. |
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pcguy join:1999-10-15 Winnipeg, MB |
to jfmezei
Metered Internet just a matter of "fairness" (and profits) - » arstechnica.com/tech-pol ··· fair.ars |
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El QuintronCancel Culture Ambassador Premium Member join:2008-04-28 Tronna
1 recommendation |
to MaynardKrebs
said by MaynardKrebs:Let's be clear in all this: Monetizing / monetization are code words for "profit centre", and not "cost recovery" or "behaviour modification". This would be fine within the right price range but at these prices it's meant to recoup lost cable subs and then some. |
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Vomio
Member
2011-Mar-22 8:00 pm
"And then some" must include the failed buy-out, the spending freeze while awaiting the buy-out and the re-inflation of the apparent stock value. |
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DavesnothereChange is NOT Necessarily Progress Premium Member join:2009-06-15 Canada 1 edit |
to BACONATOR26
said by BACONATOR26:As we all suspected, Bell's UBB is actually a REVENUE generator. It is clearly not the end of the world if Bell's UBB was taken away.
"Turning to slide 9, our residential services had an excellent revenue quarter from a data perspective, as well, with data revenue growth of 5%, driven principally by the bandwidth usage revenue being up 83% year-over-year."
This should be posted everywhere and pointed out to at the CRTC's next proceeding. . Most interesting, and needs to be repeated AMAP ! |
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Davesnothere 1 edit |
to MaynardKrebs
said by MaynardKrebs:....It's high time for all testimony before the CRTC to be sworn under oath, with severe penalties for false/misleading statements.
1) Corporate Death Penalty - ignore a CRTC ruling once, get fined $1mm/DAY; ignore the same or another ruling twice, get fined $10MM/DAY retroactive to the date of the first ruling; ignore a new or the same ruling a third time, the corporation's charter is cancelled and corporation is placed in receivership - shareholder's equity wiped out, corporation executives & directors placed on trial for contempt with all penalties payable personally.
2) Powers of Investigation to be added to IC/CRTC mandate - includes audit teams capable of surprise technical inspections, power to demand technical information on-the-spot, power to remove equipment/records for study. penalties for failure to comply are same as 1) above. . WHAT ? And abolish the COMFY CHAIR ?! |
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Davesnothere 1 edit |
to MaynardKrebs
said by MaynardKrebs:It's also Shaw being candid with investors and liars to the CRTC.
»www.shaw.ca/uploadedFile ··· inal.pdf
Slide #5 (numbers at lower left) In the future, we believe our usage based billing plan will enable the further monetization of our Internet business as data usage becomes more prevalent and common amongst our customer base (ie. streaming of video)
Slide 19 Over-the-top applications (i.e. Global TV website, Hulu etc.) relating to the viewing of traditional broadcasting will become more common in the future and management of content will help mitigate this risk to our core business
Let's be clear in all this: Monetizing / monetization are code words for "profit centre", and not "cost recovery" or "behaviour modification". . Good Find ! |
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A little off topic, well maybe not. Not about financials but some quotes from some transcripts. » www.facebook.com/openmed ··· 09871250 |
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imaddicted2u |
Telecom Notice of Consultation CRTC 2009-261-7 Notice of hearing 31 May 2010
MR. BIBIC: 7900 ..We appealed to Cabinet on the basis that wholesale speed matching rules would affect investment. Clearly Cabinet agreed, otherwise they would have rejected the petition, just as they rejected MTS' petition on the same day seeking to stop ethernet forbearance and seeking more unbundling.
7901 .. I appreciate that you are struggling with the potential impacts of the absence of forced access on ISPs. It is a difficult issue. But your role, respectfully, is not to protect them, and you acknowledge that in paragraph 39 of your essential facilities decision to which TELUS made reference this morning.See More
7902 ..There is ample retail competition. ISPs have options.
7903 ..Cabinet did not ask this Commission to reconsider its own speed matching rule in order to get the same decision back, or worse, a decision with yet more unbundling.
7904 Thank you. |
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imaddicted2u |
This shoulb be on top of my previous post. ý6.In referring the decisions back to the Commission for reconsideration, the Governor in Council stated that she considers it material to this reconsideration for the Commission to consider whether (a) the speed matching requirements unduly diminish the incentives to invest in new network infrastructure in general and, in particular, in markets of different sizes; (b) in the absence of the speed matching requirements there would be sufficient competition to protect the interests of users; (c) the respective wholesale obligations imposed on incumbent telephone and cable companies are equitable or represent a competitive disadvantage; and (d) the impact of these wholesale requirements unduly impairs the ability of incumbent telephone companies to offer new converged services, such as Internet Protocol television (IPTV). |
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imaddicted2u |
Seems the long term plan is to drive out wholesale isp's so that Bell can sell the indie isp's customers IPTV. |
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imaddicted2u |
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