With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1512670
15 B C B U S I N E S S . C A J A N U A R Y 2 0 24 growing up in the city is going to be a lot different from mine in some ways. We're making it work, our families are here, we're in it for the long haul. You have a lot of efforts and investments here as well. We do, we're committed to it. Coming together with Shaw, we had a significant wireless network and now we have a sig- nificant cable network. We've committed $3 billion of capital to continue to invest. Half a million of that is in rural connectiv- ity. The commitment is there. Besides the network that we have, we have other assets, 20 TV stations, 15 radio stations. We're making sure we're focused on keep- ing the public informed. As we talk about public safety, that's an important platform for us to get the messages out. Is it challenging to invest and do business here given Telus's pres- ence? Are there more road blocks in B.C. than in other provinces? They're different. Every province has its challenges in terms of geography. I think that's the biggest one. As we build out Highway 16, for example, there's a lot of rock in the ground, a lot of hilly and mountainous area. Putting a cell tower on the side of a mountain is a lot different than in a farm field, as you can imagine. The engineering challenges are there. That hasn't deterred us. What's encouraging is the reaction you get from both consumers and businesses— they love the idea of more choice. We see our job in this as bringing more choice and more value. It's rewarding in the sense that there does seem to be enthusi- asm in the brand. People are wondering, What do you have to offer, Rogers? You've already talked about it a bit, but it's been six months since the merger with Shaw. Does that put a lot more pressure on you with all these extra employees and responsibili- ties? What have the last six months been like for you personally? It's been good. I gotta tell you, the pres- sure is on the legacy of the two compa- nies. Ted [Rogers] and J.R. [Shaw] built these two terrific companies. For me, it's an honour to be able to work with these two terrific companies and put them together. Going into it, we thought a lot about their legacies and making sure we do this well to create something they'd be proud of. That's genuinely been our North Star and guiding light on this. What would they want? They'd want something where the customer says, Wow, this is different. Rogers and Shaw coming together made a difference, gave me more value, more choice, more connectivity. You look at tangible things like High- ways 16, 14, 4, 97, 95. Those are all things that, for the longest time, our competitor didn't take in terms of building out and we're saying we're committed to building connectivity in the province. And then the last piece is about innovation. What's the next best thing? We're bringing the best broadband with the updates we're doing there. We're on the 10G cable apps plat- form that we're bringing to the province. We've got the best entertainment product, Ignite TV, which is an all IP-based prod- uct. We're bringing home monitoring, which Shaw didn't have. And we're bring- ing in a Rogers credit card. We're a bank. [Flips card on the table.] Can I charge this on a bunch of stuff downstairs? I saw some chocolate muffins. [Laughs] This one won't work. It's just for show. But we've been a scheduled bank for 10 years. What we're doing differ- ently now is trying to create more value. With this one, when you get a card—we launched this last week just ahead of the iPhone launch—you can put your iPhone on this and you can pay it over four years. Wireless companies can only do it over two years, that's just the government rule. By putting it on the credit card, you can pay it over four years. Cut the monthly payments in half. Let's use the assets we have to get at affordability. So, how do we " What's encouraging is the reaction you get from both consumers and business- es—they love the idea of more choice. We see our job in this as bringing more choice and more value. It's rewarding in the sense that there does seem to be enthusiasm in the brand. People are wondering , What do you have to offer, Rogers?"