In the days before satellite delivery of television signals, a small
company on the Prairies dreamt of a new way to serve its sparsely
populated region. Sky Cable had developed a revolutionary wireless
digital technology and had ambitions of becoming an international
leader in the field. But the dream was becoming a nightmare. Three
times it had applied for CRTC approval, and three times it was turned
down.
Enter Bay Consulting Group and
Hans Jansen with his vast broadcasting experience. “We had to think
outside the box to find a way to persuade the CRTC it had been wrong,”
says Hans.
Sky Cable’s applications had
relied on their new, but still untested, technology. Bell Canada,
fearful of the potential competition from wireless digital services,
led the opposition to Sky Cable. Bell persuaded the CRTC that the Sky
Cable approach was technically unfeasible, could not work and that it
would be foolhardy to approve such a venture.
Hans decided to forget about
defending Sky Cable’s new technology and shifted to a consumer-driven
approach. There were three types of television audiences, he argued.
Those served by cable, those who lived close enough to transmission
towers to receive adequate reception from antennae and those who lived
too far from the towers and were too expensive to serve by cable. Hans
maintained that this last group, comprising thousands of people, was
clearly underserved and being discriminated against by the CRTC. “We
made an argument Bell could not refute,” he recalls. “And we had the
data to support our case.”
He adds: “We forced the regulator
to look beyond the status quo of monopolies controlling communications.
The evidence was so overwhelming that the dam broke and truly free
competition emerged.”
Sky Cable went on to become a
leader in the field, although it was soon surpassed by yet another new
technology, satellite servers, including Bell’s. However, Sky Cable,
now known as SkyWeb, still offers broadband communications such as
digital cable and high-speed Internet services in Manitoba, British
Columbia, California and Hawaii.
