By Ahmad Hathout
Cogeco executives said Thursday that the company will soon launch an Oxio-style brand in the United States, owing to the wholesale internet service’s success in Canada and the need to gain American market share it believes is right there for the taking.
CEO Frederic Perron said on a first-quarter 2026 earnings conference call that its U.S. brand Breezeline will launch an “Oxio-like” fully digital brand in its operating territory next month. Cogeco purchased Montreal-based Oxio’s internet business in 2023 as a digital-only second brand leveraging the wholesale internet access regime.
“We are … super excited about…
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The Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services (CCTS) received a record number of complaints from telecom and TV customers this past fiscal year, with billing problems continuing to be the leading complaint issue, according to the CCTS’s annual report published early Wednesday.
Between Aug. 1, 2024 and July 31, 2025, the CCTS accepted 23,647 complaints from customers across Canada. This represents a 17 per cent increase from the previous year and is the highest number of complaints accepted in the CCTS’s history.
The top 10 issues raised across all service types were: incorrect charge for…
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André Provencher, a member of the National Film Board of Canada’s board of trustees and a former media executive at TVA Group and Quebecor Media, died of pancreatic cancer last Thursday at the age of 76.
“It is with deep sadness that the NFB learned of the passing of André Provencher,” said an NFB statement honouring his memory Saturday. “A skilled administrator and strategist, André Provencher was an ardent ambassador for cultural outreach. His vision and commitment have left a lasting mark on the Canadian audiovisual industry.”
Provencher had been a member…
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By Ahmad Hathout
The Quebec Superior Court has approved a class of plaintiffs to sue Videotron and Cogeco for price increases it says were made without proper notice.
The court on Friday found that the class may have a legitimate case at trial because the telecoms neglected to include in their notice of price increases certain information required by the province’s Consumer Protection Act (CPA), namely: a previous version of the amended clause and all options available for a customer to cancel their services.
Section 11.2 of the CPA stipulates that the company must provide at least 30 days notice of a…
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Follows other telecoms asking for change in reporting thresholds
By Ahmad Hathout
Telesat is asking the CRTC to clarify if satellite transport providers are subject to its new outage reporting rules and, if so, to amend them because they are not privy to some of the information the regulator is asking for.
In a review and vary application made public on Monday, the Ottawa-based company said because it doesn’t provide services directly to retail customers, it cannot comply with the CRTC’s new rules that establish a new threshold for reporting to official bodies. It is asking for a new set of reporting…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Cogeco is alleging the CRTC did not adequately weigh the impact of Quebecor’s influence on editorial voices in Montreal when it allowed its internet station QUB Radio to continue operating on the FM airwaves.
Cogeco claims in a leave application to the Federal Court of Appeal on Monday that the regulator made an incomplete analysis when it determined last month that QUB Radio could continue operating on Leclerc Communication’s FM station, CJPX-FM (99.5 FM), through a simple agreement between the two companies.
The CRTC ruled that the arrangement, announced in the summer of…
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By Ahmad Hathout
The Federal Court of Appeal will hear a SaskTel challenge that alleges the CRTC’s decision to mandate access its bundled fibre facilities was based on a cabinet direction that conflicts with the Telecommunications Act.
The court approved the telco’s leave to appeal application on Friday, just over a year after it was filed in September 2024.
The gist of the argument is that the CRTC allegedly preordained a decision based on what it was told by the federal government, which, through section 10 of the 2023 cabinet direction, ordered it to adopt a specific policy of…
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Being one of the major telecoms to receive funding from Southwestern Integrated Fibre Technology Inc. (SWIFT) to build broadband networks in southwestern Ontario, Bell is being asked by the CRTC to respond to questions relating to a Part 1 application from consulting firm Broadlytics that requested the CRTC clarify that SWIFT-funded builds are subject to the commission’s aggregated wholesale access framework for fibre facilities.
The CRTC made its information request to Bell via a Nov. 3 letter, after the telecom giant did not intervene in the commission’s proceeding on…
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The CRTC said in a letter last Friday it is temporarily suspending the Nov. 4 implementation deadline for its new telecom service outage reporting requirements as it considers an Oct. 7 review-and-vary application jointly filed by major telecoms Rogers, Bell, Telus, Eastlink, Cogeco, Quebecor and SaskTel.
The group has requested changes be made to the new outage reporting requirements to address operational challenges and to reduce the administrative burden on them, while also asking the CRTC to extend the implementation deadline.
The CRTC is granting an extension,…
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By Ahmad Hathout
The head of Cogeco said Thursday that the internet resale policy has not impacted the company’s ability to grow as a reseller nor has it turned customers off its brand.
“At a higher level, internet resale in Canada between the different players is a fact of life and it’s been a fact of life for quite some time,” said President and CEO Frederic Perron during the company’s fourth quarter earnings call Thursday. “Two of the big three that we don’t already compete with on an infrastructure basis are already reselling our network in Quebec and Ontario and have…
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