Actually, no, it's not. I'm a network administrator for a multi national company today, and started at Shaw more than a decade ago. If they are still hiding behind that BS excuse, it's because 6-12 months ago they already knew they were going to force this sellout to the idiots at Rogers. Why would they waste money and resources revamping systems and contracts when within another year we'll have to start using Roger's crap?
There are no mobile rights, only streaming and rebroadcast rights.
Prior to Shaw having streaming boxes, they only had broadcast receivers, known more commonly as "cable boxes". When this was their broadcast method, yes they had rebroadcast rights for the American channels, but not network streaming rights.
Now that everything is streamed over the IP trunk, they must have network streaming rights. This is why you *must* have internet service in order to use the new streaming boxes. You don't have to have Shaw internet, just fast enough internet to stream the service on the embedded app on the box (yes I've tested this, so don't waste your time refuting it)
The only caveat in these types of streaming rights, is that they can only broadcast to a dedicated service app, and not an aggregate service, nor sell said stream to another service. Since they are only streaming to their own Bluecurve app, whether embedded or not, they could stream to the mobile app within that agreement structure.They simply choose not to. Either that, or they are illegally streaming the channels to the streaming boxes. They can't have it one way and not another where streaming is concerned. Either way, they are lying on one hand and/or being lazy on the other.
In summary, they simply don't care because they are sellouts that got our money and created a monopoly for Rogers in the process. They have no reason to further develop any of their offerings since we will be using Roger's crap offerings soon enough.
