PETERBOROUGH, ON – Luc J. Grimard has joined the sales and product support staff at Capella Telecommunications Inc., the voice, video and data systems distributor announced Monday.
Working out of the company’s Montreal office as the technical sales representative, Grimard’s primary role will be to provide bilingual pre- and post-sales support for digital technologies used in head-end facilities. Prior to joining Capella, Grimard was manager of digital services, and IT/technical support manager for Cogeco Cable.
“A large part of Capella’s success is due to our ability to provide expert technical advice and assistance to our customers, and Luc’s presence on our team will…
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WHILE BRAD SHAW is now CEO of a much different Shaw Communications than the one his father JR and brother Jim built and ran, one aspect hasn’t changed.
No handlers.
As a journalist, I’ve interviewed many CEOs and other senior executives at large corporations. Most of them come to interviews with one or two others in tow who keep tabs on the interview or have other tasks. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s just not the way the Shaws do things. Never been their style. When a reporter calls the company with a question, invariably the president or CEO is the…
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GATINEAU – Without indemnifying broadcasters and distributors and limiting their legal liability, ongoing development of a national emergency alerting system may be at risk, the CRTC’s hearing on Pelmorex Communications Inc.’s licence renewal heard this week.
But Commission chair Konrad von Finckenstein (a former judge) suggested that the whole liability issue may in fact be a red herring.
David Townsend, a professor in the Faulty of Law at the University of New Brunswick, who was appearing with the Canadian Association for Public Alerting and Notification (CAPAN), agreed.
“It’s overblown, but when parties are refusing to participate and really help the…
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NOT LONG AGO I ASKED A CRTC senior policy advisor I know how work was going. It was one of those just-making-conversation questions we all ask, but I was a little surprised at his response:
“Livin’ the dream,” he excitedly told me. Now, I’m not sure my facial expression betrayed my wonder at that statement and I don’t remember what I said next, but he continued to add that he found it exciting, interesting and fun to debate and then help craft what would become the “law of the land.”
Upon reflection, it shouldn’t have come as such a shock –…
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GATINEAU – The winds of criticism were blowing Pelmorex Communications’ way during the first day of its licence renewal hearing in Gatineau on Tuesday as CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein and Pelmorex senior VP of regulatory and strategic affairs Paul Temple sparred over aspects of the company’s licence renewal application.
In addition to asking for a seven-year licence renewal, Pelmorex is requesting an extension to the 2009 mandatory order on 9(1)(h) that would keep the Weather Network and MétéoMédia on basic carriage until 2018. The company says that it needs the extension to help offset the costs of operating…
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CALGARY – Shaw Communications said today that thanks to the national backlash over the concept of usage-based billing, it is asking customers to participate in consultation sessions to share their thoughts on how the big ISP should handle Internet usage allowances and billing.
That’s despite the fact the whole UBB furor has little to do with Shaw as it has just a single third party ISPs riding on its network and hadn’t yet begun charging retail customers for exceeding the gigabit download thresholds the company had set (“High Speed” has a 60 GB file transfer limit, “Extreme” has a 100…
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HOW DID A CRTC DECISION on usage-based billing that affects so few total Canadians become a national story and potentially an election issue?
It’s your fault, big ISPs.
According to recent research, most customers of the large Canadian ISPs were not even aware their Internet packages were subject to bandwidth caps and extra billing if they went over those limits. They didn’t know they were capped and sure didn’t know how much extra it could cost.
In short, the big ISPs were and are doing a poor job letting their customers know their limits and what they mean. People aren’t…
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GATINEAU – The way the dance works in these CRTC proceedings is the applicant draws a few lines in the sand in its application and presentation, a few in granite, listens to a few days of appearances by intervenors, gauges the reaction of the commissioners to various ideas presented – and then re-draws those sandy lines for their final public follow up appearances.
BCE was no different Friday morning during its appearance on the closing day of the CRTC hearing into its acquisition of CTV.
Right off the bat, its executives told the CRTC it is ready to endorse the Commission’s…
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GATINEAU – If BCE is going to own CTV (and with it, French sports channel RDS) plus the piece of the Montreal Canadiens it currently holds, then there must be special rules put in place governing sports programming exclusives in Quebec, according to Quebecor Media CEO Pierre Karl Péladeau.
Péladeau was speaking in front of the CRTC this morning as the Commission’s hearing into the acquisition of CTV by BCE continued.
While first stating that the valuation BCE put on CTV is too low (the CRTC says it is worth $2.67 billion, BCE says $2.2 bil) and must be re-evaluated by…
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GATINEAU – Tuesday afternoon, BCE president and CEO George Cope (who looked a little grey as he fought through a bad cold) was unequivocal when it came to MPEG-4 video compression technology: Without benefits money, the company won’t do that upgrade.
Ever.
Bell’s proposed benefits package proposes an MPEG-4 conversion for Bell Satellite TV that would then see it able to carry all local OTA TV stations which are eligible for the local programming improvement fund (LPIF is a fund created by the CRTC in 2009 to assist small local TV broadcasters). Those local ‘casters have long complained that the fact…
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