Telus TV

Type	Service of Telus
Industry	IPTV and Satellite TV
Founded	2006
Headquarters	Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
Area served	British Columbia Alberta Quebec
Products	IPTV and Satellite TV
Parent	TELUS
Website	www.telus.com/tv

Telus TV is a product of Telus that provides IPTV and Satellite TV service in the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, and Quebec. Telus launched IPTV service in November 2005 to customers in select Alberta communities and Satellite TV service in 2009 to customers across British Columbia and Alberta. As of February 2011, Telus IPTV service (Optik TV) is available in various communities throughout British Columbia, Alberta, and Quebec.^[1]

Optik TV provides customers access to over 400 digital channels including more than 100 in HD, while Telus Satellite TV offers over 500 digital channels including over 100 in HD. As of February 2013, over 678,000 customers subscribe to Telus TV. Major competitors for Telus TV include satellite services Shaw Direct and Bell TV as well as various cable and communications companies across British Columbia and Alberta, such as Shaw, Novus and Eastlink.

Optik TV [edit]

Optik TV is Telus' IPTV based television service. Optik TV currently uses the Microsoft Mediaroom middleware platform for its service. In the past, Telus used the iMagic and Minerva middleware platforms. Since August 2010 customers with Optik TV can use any Xbox 360 with a hard drive as a secondary set top box for Optik TV (Telus was the first company in Canada to offer this option). Video, Interactive Programming Guide and Applications are delivered via IPTV from the head-end to the consumer's High-Definition PVR or High Definition set-top box. Broadcast channels are distributed via IP multicast, allowing a single stream (channel) to be sent to any number of recipients. The system is also designed for individual unicasts for video on demand, central time shifting, start-over services and other programs desired by only one home at that particular time. The set-top box does not have a conventional tuner, but is an IP multicast client which requests the stream desired. In the IP multicast model, only the streams the customer uses are sent. The customer's connection need not have the capacity to carry all available channels simultaneously.

Telus Satellite TV [edit]

Unlike Optik TV, Telus does not operate the Telus Satellite TV service, which is owned and operated by Bell Canada using its Bell TV infrastructure, and is repackaged with Telus branding on the interactive programming guide, satellite receivers, and satellite dish. This arrangement was likely made in order to offer customers the option of bundling TV service with phone and internet service outside of the areas served by Optik TV. The arrangement was also likely seen as beneficial by Bell Canada as Bell only offers home phone and internet service in Eastern Canada but are now able to offer their TV service as part of a bundle in Western Canada.

See also [edit]

• Telus

References [edit]

1. ^ http://hometechmtl.com/2011/04/01/telus-optik-tv-only-in-east-quebec-pity/

External links [edit]

• Official Optik TV website
• Official Telus Satellite TV website
• Telus Quebec