MONTREAL – Cogeco Cable has added three new service packages to its home phone service.
The ‘basic line’ package includes unlimited local calling; the ‘select’ package includes unlimited local calling, the choice of two calling features and 100 long distance minutes in Canada and the U.S.; while the ‘freedom’ package offers unlimited local calling, the choice of five calling features and unlimited long distance calling in Canada and the U.S.
"Cogeco Home Phone truly is what our customers are looking for: flexibility, choice and competitive price”, said Ron Perrotta, VP of marketing and strategic planning, in the announcement. “Plus, there are…
Continue Reading
IF YOU JUDGED BY the various ad campaigns, Facebook pages and Twitter streams, you’d be thinking that the hearing beginning today in Gatineau is only about whether or not conventional broadcasters should get a fee for their signal.
Well, granting the broadcasters the right to negotiate a fee for carriage of their local TV signals is a foregone conclusion. I’m convinced this will happen. The term “negotiation for value” – which has begun to replace “fee-for-carriage” in the industry lexicon – was coined by CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein himself earlier this year and while I’m not necessarily opposed to…
Continue Reading
MONTREAL – Following the lead of its peers, Cogeco Cable’s Canadian operations continued to grow during the recession, the company reported today. The company continues to struggle in Portugal, although it is reporting some positive indications there.
Fourth quarter 2009 consolidated revenue increased by 8% to reach $307.8 million, when compared to the corresponding period of the prior year. Driven by increased revenue-generating units combined with rate increases and the financial results generated by the acquisition of Cogeco Data Services in the last quarter of fiscal 2008, fourth-quarter Canadian operations revenue went up by $34.8 million, or 15.8%.
However, the company’s…
Continue Reading
TORONTO – Cogeco Data Services has signed a 10-year, multi-million dollar agreement with the City of Toronto to upgrade its wide area network services to one of the most technologically sophisticated, all-optical networks in Canada.
The deal will include a wide area network connection to City agencies, boards, and commissions including the Toronto Public Library, Toronto Police Services, Toronto Transit Commission, Toronto Zoo and Toronto proper facilities, serving a majority of the City’s 50,000 employees. The initiative will provide for 1 Gbps Ethernet services to all City of Toronto sites and 20 Gbps+ to the City data centres, while achieving…
Continue Reading
HAMILTON and LONDON Ont. – The winner of the 2009 Cartt.ca Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers Ontario Chapter Cable-Tec Expo editorial internship is Dan Chelchowski of Rogers Cable.
Cartt.ca, the Canadian cable, radio, television and telecom industry’s leading news source, each year offers one member of the Ontario Chapter of the SCTE the chance to attend the annual Cable-Tec Expo, the premier cable telecommunications technical trade show.
It is being held this week in Denver, Colo.
This is an annual opportunity aimed at those technicians or young engineers whose company might not normally send them to this conference. We began in…
Continue Reading
TORONTO – Is Canada’s broadband infrastructure lagging or leading that of other countries?
According to a recent report by Canadian telecom consultant Mark Goldberg and Giganomics’ Suzanne Blackwell, that question can be difficult to answer. International comparative statistics have been conflicted on Canada’s broadband performance, in large part due to methodological errors in some of the research that in turn biased the resulting rankings.
The authors are particularly critical of the OECD rankings which they describes as “highly dependent on per country sampling data used”, while its penetration metrics are biased in favour of countries with smaller household sizes. Also, the OECD…
Continue Reading
THE PUBLIC RELATIONS war between Canadian BDUs and broadcasters over fee-for-carriage got a little sillier yesterday.
Right away, I already know the broadcasters are reading that opening line and getting hot under the collar. “It’s not fee-for-carriage, it’s value-for-signal,” or “it’s about the right to negotiate for fair value for our signals,” they are muttering.
And now, the BDUs out there are thinking “screw that, it’s a fee, call it what it is.”
In an extreme nutshell, broadcasters are trying to re-frame the debate saying now they only want the ability to negotiate for a fee for their local TV signals, which…
Continue Reading
TORONTO – A coalition of some of Canada’s biggest TV service providers have teamed up on a campaign to tell their side of the story on the contentious issue of fee for carriage.
Bell, Bell Aliant, Cogeco, EastLink, Rogers and Telus have joined forces on ‘Stop the TV Tax’ which they say is designed to ensure “that Canadians hear the whole story”.
"Cable and satellite subscribers have united to stop the broadcasters’ costly proposal because it amounts to a tax, pure and simple”, said Rogers vice chair Phil Lind, in a statement. “This tax will hit viewers for stations that have always…
Continue Reading
EDMONTON – Using some of the most inflammatory language we’ve seen in a press release (invoking both a rodent and the seal hunt), supporters of pay TV service Super Channel are calling for people to boycott Rogers Cable.
The must-carry pay channel is currently operating under creditor protection and the Allard-family-owned service recently won a victory at the CRTC, where the Regulator said Rogers wasn’t marketing the new service fairly, as we reported nearly two weeks ago.
Super Channel also has a civil case pending against Rogers.
But the press release, issued Tuesday evening by “The Friends of Super Channel”…
Continue Reading
THE BIG BROADCASTERS and BDUs fought this, but by September 14th, those companies had to file their aggregate financial data from their 2008 fiscal years with the Commission.
On the weekend, the CRTC posted the figures on its web site and since the industry it currently roiling over the continuing fee-for-carriage debate, we looked at the numbers largely through that prism.
After spending several hours examining a lot of the data, I can tell you the most lucrative place to work is Bell TV – which paid its 1,398 employees an average salary of $90,136 – or CTV, whose average…
Continue Reading
