It makes me so happy when, just as I’m asking myself “what should I write about this week?” the topics for my next few blog posts arrive unsolicited in my mailbox.

It’s like the universe is listening!

In fact, this week I was spoiled for choice, with more than one topic catching my interest, but that’s neither here nor there.

You might recall that last week I wrote about the competition in streaming TV and movies heating up here in the frozen North, with Shaw, Rogers and Bell going head to head with Netflix for customers streaming dollars.

One big name was absent from that article, TELUS the big national phone company hasn’t debuted a streaming service of their own, at least not yet, but they are going HARD in the paint to win over TV customers to their Optik TV and high-speed internet service.

In their attempt to woo me and other potential customers this week they mailed out a flyer that promises the following perks if I sign up for Optik TV:

A FREE 40-inch Samsung TV
Netflix free of charge for 6 months
A FREE PVR rental, and an additional 2 set-top box rentals for free with a 3 year contract

 

All that adds up to a very aggressive offer to new subscribers.

In case you’re interested, in the fine print the Samsung TV is valued at $689, and the Netflix promotion is valued at $8.99 a month for the standard 2-simultaneous stream service, $53.94 in total.

This is the world we live in now: where the phone company is selling broadcast TV, the TV companies are selling phone service (I get frequent junk mail from Shaw for their home phone services), and everybody is selling Internet service.

I’m not going to sign up, but this piqued my interest: I’m going to pay close attention to what the service providers are offering this year. It seems like things are heating up!