MY FIRST MEETING WITH SHAW Communications president Peter Bissonnette in the winter of 1998 seems like a lifetime ago. It was in Richmond Hill, then the home base of Shaw’s substantial Ontario cable operations. I think it was February.
This was before Bissonnette was even president of the company. Before Shaw and Rogers traded their Ontario and British Columbia cable systems to each other. Before Izzy Asper and JR Shaw split up WIC (Western International Communications). Before the Shaw family spun its media assets into Corus Entertainment. Before a Jean Monty-led BCE bought CTV the first time, claiming – a…
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MONTREAL – Cogeco Cable's digital customers in Quebec and in Ontario now have access to its Whole Home DVR service that was originally announced back in August. The Whole Home DVR allows subscribers to program and record shows from any connected TV in your home, to take advantage of and share recorded content between all connected TVs and to stop viewing a recorded show in one room, and pick it up where you left off in another.
With Whole Home DVR all recorded content is accessible via any compatible HD receiver in the home. Customers…
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WHILE CONCEDING THAT THE various accusations and complaints levelled against it over the past weeks and months show a high level of “competitive and financial tension” evident in the Canadian TV business nowadays, Bell Canada told the CRTC Friday that this tension should not impact the approval of its purchase of Astral Media.
In its final written reply to the CRTC hearing into the purchase, Bell Canada insisted its decision to buy Astral Media and all of its radio stations, TV properties and other assets is in the public interest and that only by owning the…
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MONTREAL – Some 55 years and 40 acquisitions later, Cogeco’s growth from $20 million to $1.5 billion in projected annual revenues stems from focusing on the future, while providing customers the best services and support each day says the company president and CEO. Louis Audet made the remarks last Wednesday to the Canadian Club of Montréal at the Hôtel Delta Montréal, where he also revealed the company’s ambitious data hosting strategy and explained why its controversial decision to purchase Atlantic Broadband remains a “terrific opportunity.”
Audet calls Cogeco’s video, Internet and telephony services that cover more than 1.6 million…
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GRANTING BELL THE RIGHT to buy Astral Media will make an already big company that acts badly, enormous, add incentive for it act even worse, which in the end will crush competition and choice in Canada. Therefore, the deal needs to be quashed altogether or tough new rules applied to constrain the biggest player in Canadian media, say final replies to the CRTC’s public proceeding into Bell Canada’s quest to buy Astral Media.
Those last written rejoinders to the Commission’s public proceeding into Bell Canada’s purchase of Astral Media (CRTC 2012-370) from intervenors were due into the Commission on Friday,…
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MONTREAL – With its traditional business of residential television, Internet and phone in Canada maturing, Cogeco Cable CEO Louis Audet says the United States will be one of the company’s main growth avenues over the next number of years.
Speaking at a CIBC institutional investors conference in Montreal on Thursday, Audet identified Cogeco’s burgeoning business services unit (telecom, data hosting, other IT services and so forth under its Cogeco Data Services division) and further network purchases Stateside as prime growth levers he intends to pull on.
The first plunge into the American cable market came earlier this year with the company’s…
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I DON’T RECALL THIS question being clearly asked last week of the company executives who would block Bell Canada’s purchase of Astral Media: Why do you fear Bell would act the way you say it will?
The subject was broached a few times last week during the CRTC hearing and was sort-of asked, just not in as direct a way as we’ve put it above. The answer was given a number of times. Put simply, the executives of Quebecor, Cogeco, Rogers, EastLink and others say Bell is behaving poorly already and they fear an even bigger Bell would act as…
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MONTREAL – An American consortium of cable companies which have banded together to let their customers roam freely on each others’ Wi-Fi networks may soon gain a Canadian partner.
Earlier this year (as reported on by Cartt.ca from the Cable Show in Boston), a number of U.S. MSOs forged a new partnership to let their respective customers share 50,000 wireless hotspots for free when they travel. When traveling outside their home markets, high-speed Internet subscribers of the participating companies (Cablevision, Comcast, Cox, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House) will look for the “CableWiFi” network and through…
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TORONTO – North American wireless carriers reported strong Q2 margins, with combined wireless EBITDA service margins for Rogers, Telus, Bell, AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, LEAP and MetroPCS up 342 basis points and EBITDA growth up 14.5% over the previous year. This according to figures reported in Dvai Ghose’s Canaccord Genuity Daily Letter for September 17.
He says the improved margins were driven by reduced device subsidy pressure. Wireless equipment subsidies dropped an estimated 12% in Q2 due to a “dearth of iconic device launches.” He noted that with the Samsung Galaxy S III and the iPhone 5 recently launched “we…
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TORONTO – Astral’s re-branded classic movie channels, The Movie Network Encore and The Movie Network Encore 2, launch today across Eastern Canada.
Formerly known as Mpix and MorePix, the re-branded channels have a new look and feel that more closely aligns graphically with The Movie Network, the primary brand and channel in the suite of pay services it offers says Astral. All TMN Encore and TMN Encore 2 titles are available on the SVOD service TMN Encore OnDemand, and on TMN Encore OnLine, an Internet-based content streaming service.
“By visually aligning TMN Encore and The Movie Network we are…
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