MONTREAL – The uniqueness of the Montreal market, the fact that there is only one AM station still operating in the region, and Astral’s significant radio holdings in the province should be all the evidence the CRTC needs to grant Cogeco an exemption to its radio station ownership policy, the company told the Commission this week.
The Regulator heard arguments this week on Cogeco’s proposed $80 million purchase of Corus Entertainment’s Quebec radio assets – and one of the major issues up for discussion was Cogeco’s ownership exemption request. If granted, it would allow the company to own three…
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GATINEAU – Despite the fact that when compared to the likes of Rogers, Shaw, Bell, Telus, Videotron and Cogeco, Bragg Communications (EastLink) is pretty small, the CRTC told the company in a letter this week that it won’t be exempted from the CRTC’s requirement to file a public version of its aggregated annual return.
“In Broadcasting Regulatory Policy 2009-560 the Commission determined that the disclosure of the public version of the aggregated annual return filed by the large ownership groups, including Bragg, was in the public interest, and that any harm that would result from such disclosure did…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The CRTC will review Cogeco’s proposal to acquire nearly all of Corus Entertainment’s Quebec radio stations at a hearing starting Tuesday in Montreal.
The $80 million deal, announced in April, includes 11 radio stations in markets ranging from Montreal to Quebec City to Trois-Rivieres. Click here for more on Cogeco’s proposed plans, which also includes a request for an exception to the common ownership policy in the Montreal French-language radio market.
Cartt.ca will have full coverage of the proceeding.
www.cogeco.cawww.corusent.com
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Perry Hoffman
GATINEAU – Canadian cable operators do not believe that a local-into-local signal carriage regime imposed on DTH companies would be disastrous for the operations of Bell TV and Shaw Direct.
Bell TV and Shaw Direct say in their submissions on 2010-488, the review of the direct-to-home satellite distribution policy they don’t have the capacity to carry all local over-the-air (OTA) signals, and despite technological improvements in compression coming online in the future complying with a local-into-local regime will be problematic.
Both say that if forced to carry all over-the-air (OTA) stations, they will have no choice but to remove specialty…
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TORONTO – Cogeco Data Services is kicking its customer service up a notch.
The data communications provider said Tuesday that is tweaking its service level agreement so that its four hour Mean Time to Restore (MTTR) clause will be reduced and changed to a three hour Time to Restore (TTR), for all new and existing enterprise metro LAN and managed wavelength customers.
Rather than working with averages, the new three hour TTR is a guarantee based on the actual time it will take to have an issue resolved, the company said. As before, technicians will immediately begin resolving any problem and…
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MONTREAL – Cogeco Cable has rolled out its home phone service in the Pembroke and Petawawa areas of Ontario, the company said Monday.
Customers may choose from three service packages, which start at a promotional price of $14.99 per month, and have the option of adding on various calling features. Installation is free of charge when combined with subscription to another Cogeco service.
“We’re excited to launch our Home Phone service in Pembroke and Petawawa because we know it truly is what our customers are looking for: flexibility, choice and competitive price”, said Ron Perrotta, VP marketing and strategic…
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MONTREAL – Cogeco Cable has rolled out its new, faster high speed Internet service in Windsor, Ontario.
Business customers who currently subscribe to the company’s ‘Business HSI Enterprise’ service will be upgraded to the ‘Ultimate 50’ package at no extra cost, while residential customers in the region may now choose either the ‘Ultimate 30’ or ‘Ultimate 50’ package.
Powered by DOCSIS 3.0 technology, the ‘Ultimate 30’ service offers speeds of up to 30 Mbps for downloads and up to 1.5 Mbps for uploads with a monthly download cap of 125 GB. With the ‘Ultimate 50’ package, speeds for residential customers can…
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GATINEAU – Canada’s major cable companies and telcos are squaring off against MTS Allstream and the Public Interest Advocacy Centre over the CRTC’s authority to mandate broadband as an essential service.
Comments filed with the CRTC in late August show that Bell Canada, Telus and all of the large cablecos are, not surprisingly, opposed to any Commission intervention on this matter, while PIAC and MTS firmly believe that the CRTC can make broadband essential.
The issue has become a central theme in an ongoing proceeding on a broad variety of telecom matters, generally referred to as the obligation to…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Most stakeholders agree that the CRTC’s new community TV policy did little to lessen cable’s firm grip on the country’s community channels. But even some of the country’s biggest cable companies appear to have some concerns.
“The closed captioning component is going to be a challenge”, said Colette Watson, VP of Rogers TV, in an interview with Cartt.ca. “As of December 31st, the funding is frozen to the levels we’re at now for four years. That’s fine, we’ll make that work. The issue then becomes, if in that same time frame we have to caption 100%…
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OTTAWA – Should broadband be deemed an essential service for all Canadians in the same way as basic telephone service?
Count the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) firmly on the ‘yes’ side of that question. In a new report called Is Broadband Basic Service, the Ottawa-based consumer organization details how Canada could benefit from such a plan, and how countries like Japan and the European Union have been successful thanks to policy and infrastructure investments that make broadband service a basic right for their citizens. All of which stands in contrast to Canada where no such regime exists –…
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