QUISPAMSIS, NB — The Canadian Communication Systems Alliance (CCSA) said today it has called on the CRTC to stop Rogers Communications “from shutting down the satellite delivery of television signals to thousands of Canadians living in rural communities and the Far North.”
Just prior to the Commission’s March 24 approval of Rogers’ purchase of Shaw Communications, which includes Shaw Broadcast Services (SBS), “Shaw announced that a critical component of the SBS service, known as HITS-QT Plus, would be shut down by year end,” according to the CCSA’s press release.
The CCSA has been calling on the CRTC to resolve Shaw’s HITS-QT issue for months, as reported by Cartt.ca, and the regulator has been urging a resolution to the issue. Shaw has said that the vendor for the technology had decided it would no longer support it, with the Calgary-based company saying that it is working to find alternatives with member companies that rely on the technology.
HITS-QT is a hardware and software system “which is critical to the provision of TV services by cable TV operators who rely on satellite signal delivery,” the release says, explaining these operators use the HITS-QT system to program set top boxes in customers homes’ to authenticate signal reception and for billing.
“According to CCSA’s information, the announced forthcoming HITS-QT Plus shutdown threatens the on-going delivery of TV services to almost 10,000 Canadians living in over 30 rural communities across the country and in the North,” the release reads.
The CRTC’s approval of Rogers’ purchase of Shaw included a number of conditions, “including that Rogers would continue to honour all existing contracts related to SBS for the full term of each such agreement,” the release says. That review only looked at the broadcast side of the deal.
“At the Rogers-Shaw hearing last fall, Rogers responded to our concerns about the future of the important HITS-QT Plus service under its ownership by committing to maintain the service, and in turn the CRTC said it would hold Rogers to honouring that commitment,” CCSA CEO Jay Thomson said in the release.
“Now, faced with the announcement that the HITS-QT service will not be maintained but will be dropped in less than a year, we call on the CRTC to honour its commitment to keep Rogers from allowing that to happen. Otherwise, thousands of rural and Northern Canadians could be deprived of television service in a matter of months.”
