If competition is good for consumers, then local Internet and mobile subscribers are in for a treat.
Less than a year after entering the Flin Flon market, web provider NetSet Communications plans to introduce digital phones and province-wide LTE service in 2015.
“We believe as a company that the rural residents of Manitoba should have choices,” said Robbie Zetariuk, director of marketing and dealer development for the Brandon-based company.
NetSet began offering Internet service to Flin Flon customers in the spring of 2014, two years after launching in the Schist Lake-Bakers Narrows area.
The company also operates in Cranberry Portage, where it will improve its coverage with a tower upgrade this spring.
While NetSet won’t reveal how many customers it has in the Flin Flon area, Zetariuk said new people from the region are signing up weekly.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that however many area customers NetSet has, it is a drop in the bucket compared to MTS, the province-wide leader in Internet and mobile service.
Over the past few weeks, The Reminder has contacted nearly 30 Flin Flon Internet subscribers. Not only were all of them MTS customers, none could say with certainty they knew anyone with NetSet.
MTS is not sitting idly by while its dominance is challenged.
Chelsea Ross, manager of corporate communications and public affairs for MTS, said the company is always looking for better ways to serve Flin Flon area customers.
“We have the most extensive wireless network of any provider in Manitoba, and just last summer we invested in new technology and brought LTE service to Flin Flon,” Ross said. “We have also invested more than any other company to bring high-speed Internet service to the community of Flin Flon.”
A key selling point for MTS is its unlimited data plan, which guarantees that no matter how much data a customer uses in Manitoba, they will never incur overage charges.
“We’re the only carrier to make that option available in this province,” said Ross.
But Zetariuk said unlimited data is not always what it seems, as customers who exceed a certain data level have their Internet speed reduced in what is known as “throttling.”
“Although they are not charged for an overage, they are also not able to utilize the Internet at its so-called full potential,” said Zetariuk. “It would be the same as putting gas in your car but not being able to drive your vehicle at the speed limit.”
Ross acknowledged that MTS has a “fair usage policy” that helps minimize the impact of a small number of very heavy data users on the overall system.
Once customers reach 15GB of HSPA or LTE network usage in a month, they may experience throttling, she said.
“The 15GB threshold is far beyond what is available in any plan from any carrier in Manitoba, and a very small percentage of our customers, approximately two per cent, reach that usage threshold in a given month,” said Ross. “When a customer is experiencing controlled speeds, the reduced speeds should not affect low bandwidth applications like sending emails, streaming music, website browsing and instant messaging applications. Reduced speeds may affect the performance and length of time required for applications that require greater bandwidth, like peer-to-peer file sharing.”
Just like NetSet, MTS does not publicize how many customers it has in a given region.
But Ross said the company has the province’s leading market share for wireless, Internet and home phone services.
