Shaw Communications - Getting Convergence Right

Earlier this week, I was on BNN TV talking about Shaw Communications and their pending acquisition of CanWest. Add to this their planned entry in to the mobile market, and Shaw is anything but a regional cable operator.

The more I thought about this, the more threads I saw related to the broader service provider landscape. Convergence has had more misses than hits, but with Shaw, I think the stars are lining up in their favor. I've explored these themes a bit further in my current Service Provider Views column on TMCnet. There's certainly a lot more to talk about, and I just might do that in future columns. For now, though, I'll leave you with this column, which is running now on their website. I'm all ears for some dialog around this, so please chime in if you like.

Shaw Communications - More Canadian Wireless Disruption

I've written about the Canadian wireless market a fair bit, and the plot continues to thicken. The latest twist comes from Shaw Communications, the major cable operator serving Western Canada.

They have held off - wisely, in my view - coming to market with a wireless offering, following their spectrum acquisition from last year's AWS auction. The move is on now, though, and it comes during an interesting time in that they just made a $2 billion deal to acquire CanWest, one of our largest broadcast networks. If this sounds like another dreamy convergence play, you might be right - but I don't think so.

Lots of great story lines here, and I'll be writing more extensively about it this week. Until then, though, you can get visual version of these events from a television interview I did this morning on BNN TV - Business Network News. You can view the clip here during the next few days. It only runs on their site a short while, and if you miss it, I'll have an archived version shortly.