Shaw Cable is moving to convert most of its St. Albert customers to digital signal in a bid to free up more space for higher speed internet.
The company has picked St. Albert as the second location in its upgrade plans that will change how some customers receive their cable.
Customers who receive cable without a digital box and subscribe to more than basic cable service are being given a digital box to help the company free up space on the cable wire.
The company’s vice-president of operations, John Piercy, said with all of the services they are now cramming into a cable line, the company is running out of bandwidth and needs to convert these customers to digital signals, which use less space.
Piercy said the space those channels occupy will be freed up if they are converted to digital.
“With the newer technologies coming along, in that same amount of bandwidth, you can actually put 12 digital channels or 35 megabits worth of Internet or hundreds of telephone calls.”
He said the company is providing the digital boxes and installation free of charge to customers.
“We thought the best thing to do, even though it’s fairly expensive for us from a capital perspective, is to give all of those people set top boxes to receive those signals digitally so we can free up that bandwidth.”
The switchover was set to take place yesterday and, if customers lost their signal, they should contact Shaw immediately. The company was hopeful weeks of marketing before the switch would catch everyone, but they also have extra staff on hand this week.
Piercy said St. Albert was picked partially because most of the community already has digital boxes, making the transition easier. The whole transition across the province is expected to take the company 16 months.
Servus Credit Union Place facility manger Diane Enger said they have been warning users to expect that some channels on the cardio equipment might disappear, but they are hoping to find a solution so it is only short-lived.
“We are trying to be proactive we are trying to warn our clients,” she said.
She said they have been working very closely with Shaw on the problem and she is confident they will come up with a solution.
“We are a bit of a pilot project and they are working through what are going to be the best options.”
