BCE converges on the Olympics with coverage on every screen
For BCE Inc., the London Olympics aren’t about who can jump the highest or win the most points in the modern pentathlon.
The Games of the XXX Olympiad are a critical test of the company’s two-year, multibillion-dollar makeover and its “watch anywhere” strategy that delivers television broadcasts not only to the living room, but to smartphones, tablets and any other sort of screen a customer happens to be watching at the moment.
The company is using London as its stepping-out party for this plan, with which it hopes to steal thousands of customers from its rivals. It will offer about 1,100 hours of the games to wireless subscribers. By the time the Olympic flame is extinguished, its executives will have a much better idea of how many Canadians actually want to watch television on their phones, and whether BCE’s wireless network is up to the task.
“We expect to see an incredible explosion in adoption and absorption for every kind of content,” said Bell Mobility president Wade Oosterman in an interview. “The truth is a wireless device is available to everyone more often than anything else.”
The “pick a screen and fill it with goodness” strategy was set at the 2010 Vancouver games, when chief executive officer George Cope watched the women’s gold medal hockey game on his cellphone as he travelled to Vancouver from Whistler and was convinced the company’s future was in delivering content to consumers on devices other than television sets.