OLDS — O-NET has a good opportunity to expand into other communities because it offers services that few others except the big players provide, chief operating officer Matthew Anderson says.
O-NET, which is owned by the Town of Olds and is in partnership with Calgary-based FourNetworks and Nation Fiber corp, provides high-speed internet, phone and TV service.
During an interview with the Albertan, Anderson said O-NET has a big advantage over other smaller independent companies because it offers what is called “triple play” service: TV, internet and home phone service.
Generally, the only other companies out there providing triple play service are what Anderson refers to as “the incumbents,” the big phone, internet, TV service providers like Telus, Bell or Rogers.
“Most of the independents – at least in the prairie provinces – are all single-play, so internet only,” Anderson said.
That’s because providing internet only is pretty simple: many obtain internet service from wholesalers, then re-sell that service to customers.
But TV service is far more complicated.
“The television comes along with broadcasters’ rights, new CRTC regulations, new bandwidth requirements. Every channel has its own rights and responsibilities of how you can handle their content,” Anderson said.
“So TV also comes along with a lot more sophisticated equipment in your central office than simply internet reseller, relaying an internet signal back to that dwelling.”
O-NET is installing a whole new TV service platform with an eye to not only improving service to customers in Olds but also providing an attractive package for other communities in order to strengthen the company’s bottom line.
When it’s fully up and running in late spring or summer, customers will get sophisticated TV service provided by set-top boxes that they can watch via conventional remotes. Or they can download the O-NET app onto their smart TV or other devices and watch it that way.
Anderson says that platform and the triple play service O-NET can offer is very appealing to municipally-owned networks in other communities.
"O-NET is garnering a lot of interest from other municipal networks,” he said.
“Other municipal networks have invested in their own fibre networks and they want O-NET to provide its home phone, internet and TV services on top of its network.
“O-NET is the only one that can offer the triple play that is not incumbent. And for the most part, these municipal networks do not let incumbents on their networks.
“And O-NET, to my knowledge, is one of the only ones, if not the only one, on the identified municipal networks that can offer triple play service.”
He listed Lethbridge, Sturgeon County, Red Deer County and Clearwater County as “an immediate focus for O-NET's expansion.”
In fact O-NET services are already being delivered to commercial customers in Lethbridge and to customers in Entwistle in Parkland County, west of Edmonton.
“The next kind of stage in O-NET's expansion is going to be to move into providing triple play services on all these other municipal networks,” he said.
Another plan, announced earlier by Olds chief administrative officer Brent Williams, is to provide service to First Nations in Saskatchewan via another partner, Nation Fiber Corp.
Anderson said as expansion occurs, the company, which currently has about 22 employees, will likely have to hire three or four more over the next year or so.
He said earlier, the company hired a business development manager. His job is to "manage the methodic and strategic expansion of O-NET into these new markets.”
