Vidéotron
Encyclopedia
Vidéotron GP is a Canadian integrated telecommunication
Telecommunication
Telecommunication is the transmission of information over significant distances to communicate. In earlier times, telecommunications involved the use of visual signals, such as beacons, smoke signals, semaphore telegraphs, signal flags, and optical heliographs, or audio messages via coded...

s company active in cable television
Cable television
Cable television is a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber's property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional...

, interactive multimedia
Multimedia
Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...

 development, video on demand
Video on demand
Video on Demand or Audio and Video On Demand are systems which allow users to select and watch/listen to video or audio content on demand...

, cable telephony
Cable telephony
Cable telephony is a form of digital telephony over cable TV networks. A telephone interface installed at the customer's premises converts analog signals from the customer's in-home wiring to a digital signal, which is then sent over the cable connection to the company's switching center. The...

, wireless communication and Internet access
Internet access
Many technologies and service plans for Internet access allow customers to connect to the Internet.Consumer use first became popular through dial-up connections in the 20th century....

 services. Currently, the company primarily serves Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....

, as well as the francophone communities of New Brunswick
New Brunswick
New Brunswick is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the only province in the federation that is constitutionally bilingual . The provincial capital is Fredericton and Saint John is the most populous city. Greater Moncton is the largest Census Metropolitan Area...

 and some parts of Eastern
Eastern Ontario
Eastern Ontario is a subregion of Southern Ontario in the Canadian province of Ontario which lies in a wedge-shaped area between the Ottawa River and St. Lawrence River...

 Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

. It is a subsidiary
Subsidiary
A subsidiary company, subsidiary, or daughter company is a company that is completely or partly owned and wholly controlled by another company that owns more than half of the subsidiary's stock. The subsidiary can be a company, corporation, or limited liability company. In some cases it is a...

 of Quebecor Media.

History

Vidéotron was established in 1964, under the name "Télécâble Vidéotron Ltée" as northern Montreal's first cable television network. Their initial subscriber base was 66. André Chagnon served as the company's founding president. From 1966 to 1969, the company acquired and upgraded their network to fill all of Quebec. By 1980, Vidéotron acquired Câblevision Nationale to become the largest teledistributor in Quebec. Vidéotron acquired Télé-Métropole in 1986, the largest private French-language television company in North America. By 1990, Vidéotron launched Vidéoway terminals in Quebec, the first system of interactive television in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

. Five years later, the company entered the Internet era and acquired their own Internet portal, InfiniT.com. CF Cable, which operated primarily on the western end of the Island of Montreal, southern Laval and Northern Ontario, was acquired by Vidéotron in 1997, further expanding their base. The Northern Ontario division, subsequently, was sold to Regional Cablesystems. The company launched digital television in spring of 1999 in Montreal, and in Gatineau and Quebec City in the autumn.

By the start of the 21st century, Rogers Communications striked an accord with the Chagnon family to purchase Vidéotron. However, citing cultural sovereignty concerns, the second-largest shareholder invoked their right to veto the purchase. Quebecor acquired Vidéotron instead, after months of legal proceedings. On May 23, 2001, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) approved the transfer of broadcasting licenses from Vidéotron to Quebecor; allowing the interactive television service illico to be launched.

Video on demand and high-definition television
High-definition television
High-definition television is video that has resolution substantially higher than that of traditional television systems . HDTV has one or two million pixels per frame, roughly five times that of SD...

 become available in 2003. Vidéotron launched wireless service in August 2006 and, two years later the company announced the launch of two new internet access services; Ultimate Speed Internet 30 and Ultimate Speed Internet 50 which deliver speeds of 30 Mbit/s and 50 Mbit/s respectively.

Business

Vidéotron serves 1,732,600 cable television customers, including over 1,000,000 digital cable subscribers. Vidéotron also has more than 1,109,000 high-speed cable Internet subscribers, the most in Quebec. As of August 2009, the company has activated 73,480 phones through their wireless service as well as providing cable telephone service to nearly 934,900 customers. Vidéotron's cable services are available in the greater areas of Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

, Quebec City
Quebec City
Quebec , also Québec, Quebec City or Québec City is the capital of the Canadian province of Quebec and is located within the Capitale-Nationale region. It is the second most populous city in Quebec after Montreal, which is about to the southwest...

, Gatineau
Gatineau
Gatineau is a city in western Quebec, Canada. It is the fourth largest city in the province. It is located on the northern banks of the Ottawa River, immediately across from Ottawa, Ontario, and together they form Canada's National Capital Region. Ottawa and Gatineau comprise a single Census...

, Sherbrooke, Trois-Rivières
Trois-Rivières
Trois-Rivières means three rivers in French and may refer to:in Canada*Trois-Rivières, the largest city in the Mauricie region of Quebec, Canada*Circuit Trois-Rivières, a racetrack in Trois-Rivières, Quebec...

 and Saguenay
Saguenay, Quebec
Saguenay is a city in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region of Quebec, Canada, on the Saguenay River, about north of Quebec City....

. Vidéotron also serves areas in eastern Ontario, such as Rockland
Rockland, Ontario
Rockland is a bilingual community located about east of downtown Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, part of the city of Clarence–Rockland. Rockland has a population of 9,210.-History:...

 and the surrounding municipality of Clarence-Rockland.

Vidéotron cable services has also previously been available in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

, Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

, and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. One of its previous subsidiaries, Videotron Telecom, was financed by the Carlyle Group
Carlyle Group
The Carlyle Group is an American-based global asset management firm, specializing in private equity, based in Washington, D.C. The Carlyle Group operates in four business areas: corporate private equity, real assets, market strategies and fund-of-funds, through its AlpInvest subsidiary...

.

Vidéotron also provides telecommunication services to business and governments since the integration of Vidéotron Télécom into Vidéotron Ltée. The services include dark fiber, SONET, ATM, and Ethernet links as well as video circuits used by various Quebec television networks.

Vidéotron's cable community channels are branded as VOX.

Videotron Wireless Network

In July 2008, Videotron ltée and Quebecor officially acquired spectrum licenses for advanced wireless services from Industry Canada auction at a total cost of $554,559,000. The licenses cover Quebec for an average of 40 MHz spectrum, Toronto with 10 MHz and south-east Ontario. The network was officially launched on September 9 of 2010.. Infrastructure work for the 4G wireless network was done over the span of three years, Videotron now having its own cellular communications ressources.

Pornography and Project Cleanfeed

In November 2006, Bell Aliant, Bell Canada, MTS Allstream, Rogers, Shaw, SaskTel and Telus, in conjunction with Cybertip.ca
Cybertip.ca
Cybertip.ca is Canada's official tipline for reporting the online sexual exploitation of children. The tipline is owned and operated by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, a charitable organization...

 (a nationwide tipline for reporting the online sexual exploitation of children), announced the creation of Project Cleanfeed Canada, an initiative designed to block access to hundreds of child pornography
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...

 sites. Videotron launched, in 2007, the Vigilance on the Net campaign. The campaign visited several Quebec high schools in the Fall of 2007 to deliver security messages directly to teens and their parents.

Extreme High-Speed Internet

On August 14, 2007, Videotron announced starting October 1 they will impose a 100 GiB per month download/upload limit with a penalty of $1.50 per extra GiB
Gibibyte
The gibibyte is a standards-based binary multiple of the byte, a unit of digital information storage. The gibibyte unit symbol is GiB....

 to their previously unrestricted High-Speed Extreme Internet service, even to existing signed subscribers. This decision created outrage among its Internet users, and has led to a class action suit against Videotron by consumer advocacy group Union des Consommateurs; the action is still pending.

Call Centers

The major centers are located in Montreal, Longueuil, Quebec City, Gatineau, Joliette, Saguenay and St-Hubert. Vidéotron also has outsourced customer service centers that include Utopia, Gexel Telecom, Synergie-Contact and Atelka. In 2007, Videotron made a partnership with Xceed Contact Center to outsource some of the call centers to Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

.

See also


External links

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