EastLink (company)

EastLink

Type	Private
Industry	Telecommunications
Founded	1970 (as Bragg Communications Inc.) 1998 (as EastLink)
Headquarters	Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Key people	Lee Bragg
Products	Digital Television, Cable High Speed Internet, Telephone
Revenue	$310.6 million (cable); $273 million (Internet); $6.3 million (advertising) (all 2010)[1]
Net income	$53.8 million
Employees	1,500
Website	EastLink

EastLink is a Canadian cable television and telecommunications company. In 1970, EastLink was established in Amherst, Nova Scotia, when it was issued one of the first cable licences granted by the CRTC. Through a series of acquisitions, which included the purchase of Amtelecom, Persona, Bluewater, Delta and Coast Cable, EastLink became the fifth-largest cable television provider in Canada in 2010, with approximately 1,500 employees working in offices across the country. As of 2010 it was the largest privately owned cable company in Canada, with 457,075 subscribers^[2] in nine provinces (Saskatchewan is the only province without service). It is closely held by the Bragg family of Oxford, Nova Scotia.

Reputation

• Named Business of the Year by the Halifax Chamber of Commerce in 2008
• Named one of Canada's 50 Best Companies for 2006
• Given the Excellence in Human Resources Award by the Human Resources Associations of Atlantic Canada in 2006" [1]

The company's reputation was somewhat impacted by glitches in its attempts to reach "100% of civic addresses" with Motorola Canopy fixed wireless technology as contractually obligated under the Broadband for Rural Nova Scotia initiative. In 2009 CEO Lee Bragg refused to "spend $10 million to reach 100 customers" [2] at that time unserved by its Motorola Canopy service. The number grew to over 600 by mid-2011, and the company had not yet received a C$500,000 holdback from the government. In 2010 Bragg announced his intent to make "a scandalous amount of money" in the cell business [3] suggesting that he had a longer term solution for hard-to-reach users. In 2011 the company announced it would deploy cell service in 2012, whereby it might fill in the gaps in its rural coverage.

Bragg is otherwise barely visible in the business press [4] except for a few in-depth interviews about family business principles [5] and a cheerful refusal to discuss profits and loss.

Service offerings

Cable Internet and TV

Eastlink delivers digital video/television and cable-network-based Internet services with speeds up to 250 megabits per second, one of the faster networks of this kind in North America. It was one of the first companies in North America to bundle digital cable and broadband Internet services with mobile phone service (through an agreement with Rogers Wireless). This bundle option is no long offered, customers who are already on the plan can keep the services bundled. EastLink plans on launching its own cellular services in the Maritimes starting in 2012. see below.

Eastlink's lower end offerings are unlimited access. Its faster (25, 100 and 250 megabit) services have usage based billing.

EastLink also produces community channels branded as EastLink TV to serve the company's cable customers.

Eastlink offers video on demand and high definition television (HDTV) services in many communities across Canada.^[3]

cell/3G/4G

"During the 2008 Advanced Wireless Spectrum (AWS) auction Halifax-based Bragg Communications paid $25 million and won 19 licences (located in Atlantic Canada, Northern and Southern Ontario and Grand Prairie)." It announced in 2011 a new cell and "wireless service in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, putting the pressure on Rogers, Bell and TELUS and their sub-brands (Virgin, Koodo and Fido)... It’s also expected that WIND Mobile will be opening up in Atlantic Canada. Past Wind CEO Ken Campbell recently said that it’s “safe to bet we’ll be there” in 2012." [6]

No details were available about towers or services as of November 2011, but as Eastlink deployed many wireless repeater towers for its Motorola Canopy service launched as part of the Broadband for Rural Nova Scotia initiative, upgrading these to serve as a cell and Wi-Fi mesh network was an obvious potential that would attract third parties with no tower access, such as WIND, to partner with Eastlink.

CLEC services

EastLink was the first^[4] major Canadian cable company to offer competitive local telephone service in its territory in 1999 over a fibre optic network.^[5] In 2005 the area code 902 telephone market was the most competitive telephone exchange in North America and this was credited to EastLink's presence in the market. EastLink was also the first provider to deliver local telephone competition to its service area in New Brunswick in 2005.^[6]

Fixed wireless Internet in rural Nova Scotia

In 2010 Eastlink launched another service in cooperation with other providers and the government of Nova Scotia's Broadband for Rural Nova Scotia initiative: a Motorola Canopy based rural Internet service capable of 0.5 megabit uploads, 1.5 megabit downloads, which was intended to reach "100% of civic addresses" in Nova Scotia. This level of coverage is unique in North America and is a particular challenge in a province prone to extreme weather, fog and winds. Eastlink claimed at public forums in early 2010 that the service would operate at under 100ms latency and accordingly be useful for VoIP from arbitrary third parties such as Skype, but this has not been verified. However, latency to the towers themselves was reliably under 2ms at that time.

... versus other alternatives

Critics of the Canopy service, notably Bell, argued that it is expensive (due to shorter range repeater towers). The strategy was poorly coordinated with cable networks (there being for instance no subsidy to extend the cable network where it would be easy to do so or even where it would facilitate the wireless services). Most open-systems-minded users considered Canopy an impractical direction compared to expansion of Wi-Fi hotspot services. Its primary competitor, Aliant, by contrast has invested in Wi-Fi, GSM and DSL services, but they remained as of 2011 expensive or unavailable in rural Nova Scotia.

Some jurisdictions that report unsatisfactory results with all of these technologies, including Canopy, such as Washington Island Wisconsin, have reported positive results with powerline networking. However, as power-lines do not reach "100% of civic addresses" they do not address quite the same issues. The deployment of powerline-based meters by Emera subsidiary Bangor Hydro, which also owns Nova Scotia Power Inc. on the board of which Eastlink CEO Lee Bragg serves, suggests that this technology may ultimately become part of the Eastlink mix in some rural areas.

As of early 2011, Rogers, Aliant, and Telus' mobile Internet offerings are extraordinarily expensive for heavy users and tethering of personal computers is not necessarily included under these plans; the price per gigabyte of the Eastlink service is clearly superior to any of these offerings. However, the maximum speed is much less (1.5mbps download versus up to 21mbps) and more so when these cellular providers upgrade to dual-carrier (42mbps) HSPA+.^[7] For those more concerned with speed and less with price, cellular options will be a superior rural networking choice; for those concerned with price, Eastlink's fixed wireless service, the expansion of Wi-Fi hotspots, and the use of 802.11u and 802.21 will continue to form a more reliable mesh especially in attracting tourists or in densely populated areas.^{[citation needed]}

... versus extensions of wired network

In terms of speed, where it could reach groups of customers inaccessible by Canopy, Eastlink's wired network would be substantially faster, operating at up to 100mbps download, compared to 1.5mbps download. Fixed-wireless internet is, however is many times faster than dial-up (1.5mbps) and does(unlike satellite) satisfy most expectations of "broadband Internet access". Broadband is economically or subjectively defined and is perceived very differently by persons with different latency expectations and service usage patterns, therefore perceptions of its quality are also subjective; Persons accustomed to dialup service may be thrilled with Canopy performance, whereas those used to wired cable find it slow or flaky.

Canopy service deployment encountered numerous challenges in practice, including installation of unforeseen wireless relay towers installed on an ad hoc basis that increase latency, reduce service reliability and load other towers - the inherent problems of a mesh network.

Service and installation concerns

Eastlink was not, as of November 2011, effectively held to its contractual obligation to provide "100% of civic addresses" with service nor its latency promises, even where most such customers could be easily accommodated by extending its wired network to these existing wireless relay towers. In particular, users on islands with water access were denied service as of summer 2011.

More seriously, installers as of November 2011 had no way to test latency before asking for customer signoff and final installation, meaning that any user whose latency needs could not be met would not know that until after they had agreed the service was adequate, based only on raw signal strength.

As of the fourth quarter 2011 the project had still not yet reached its promise of "100% of civic addresses." Eastlink has not commented on the consistency of speeds or latency on this network nor released any public Quality of Service (QoS) statistics or actual usage information about the services its users actually use. It was widely anticipated that Eastlink would offer access to its new cell network in 2012 on favourable terms to cut-off rural users.

Coverage

Coast Cable logo

Delta Cable logo

Provinces which currently have some Eastlink service are: Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick (limited to Sackville area) Newfoundland, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta, British Columbia. It also serves the town of Point Roberts, Washington in the United States.

Service in Saskatchewan was available in the past but is currently not available to new customers.

Although the company has mostly unified its acquisitions under the EastLink brand, in parts of British Columbia, EastLink operates as Coast Cable (Sunshine Coast) or Delta Cable (near the Fraser River Delta).

As of February 2011, Eastlink has acquired service territory on the island of Bermuda.

References

1. ^ "'We do not believe that as a privately held company we are required to share this information,' Bragg spokeswoman Jill Laing said in an interview Friday. She said the posting of some of the company’s financial details on the website is the first time the public has seen them." Source: Bill Power, "Bragg Communications earned $590m in year ", Chronicle Herald (Halifax), January 8, 2011.
2. ^ As of the end of the 2010 financial year. This was down from 462,000 the previous year. Source: Bill Power, "Bragg Communications earned $590m in year ", Chronicle Herald (Halifax), January 8, 2011.
3. ^ Eastlink
4. ^ Halifax Chamber of Commerce, Jan/Feb 2005
5. ^ Eastlink Press Release
6. ^ Eastlink Press Release
7. ^ IT World Canada

External links

• EastLink