ESSEX COUNTY, Ont. – Southwestern Integrated Fibre Technology (SWIFT) announced today an additional 484 underserved homes and businesses in Marentette Beach in Essex County will soon have access to fast reliable Internet.
“Through the SWIFT initiative, Cogeco Connexion was awarded funding to service rural areas southeast of Leamington and north of Point Pelee National Park,” a SWIFT press release explains. “The network’s main fibre route will run along parts of Point Pelee Drive, Mersea Road 12, Mersea Roads B, D and E, Marentette Beach and E Beach Road.”
Construction on the network began earlier this year and is expected to…
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Bell, Cogeco, Eastlink, SaskTel asking for $3/month increase to skinny basic packages
OTTAWA and GATINEAU — Six years after skinny basic TV packages were first introduced in Canada, with a CRTC-mandated price cap of $25 per month, a group of TV service providers has asked the Commission to increase that cap to $28 per month.
Bell, Cogeco Communications, Eastlink and SaskTel filed a joint application in January 2022 making the request, which also asked for subsequent yearly adjustments based on inflation, according to a CRTC press release today.
“They indicate that the proposed annual increase to the price of the…
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BURLINGTON, Ont. — Cogeco Connexion announced today its YourTV stations across Ontario will air programming featuring the culture, history and perspectives of Indigenous Peoples in local communities on Sept. 30, the second annual National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
Airing throughout the day, the programming will include the following documentaries:
Cultural Mindfulness – directed by George Couchie
We Are Still Here – directed by Dwayne Cloes
Wawahte: Residential School Survivors – directed by John Sanfilippo
Language and the Land – directed by YourTV’s Curtis Brunet
Beyond Orange Shirt Day – presentation by Phyllis Webstad, creator of Orange Shirt Day
The local…
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By Connie Thiessen
OTTAWA – New data shows the Canadian Energy Efficiency Voluntary Agreement (CEEVA) for Set-Top Boxes has resulted in a 58% drop in average energy consumption since the program’s launch in 2017.
Five of the largest Canadian Pay TV service providers (Bell Canada, Cogeco, Rogers Communications, Shaw Communications, and Videotron) are signed on to the program in addition to manufacturers (CommScope, EchoStar Technologies, and Technicolor, soon to become VANTIVA), the Consumer Technology Association and CableLabs. A second program was launched in 2019 for small network equipment (SNE), such as modems and routers.
According to a new independent annual report, the program has resulted in a fifth consecutive year of…
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TORONTO – Consolidation on the wholesale front in Canada’s telecom industry is not reducing competition, Bell’s executive vice-president and chief financial officer Glen LeBlanc (above, right) told BMO Capital Markets media and telecom analyst Tim Casey (above, left) at BMO’s 23rd annual Media and Telecom conference yesterday.
“There’s a very large reseller market… I think there’s 950 competitors in Canada,” LeBlanc said. “The barriers to entry are minimal, the largest is still in business – TekSavvy – and appears to have zero intention of selling.”
LeBlanc’s appearance at BMO’s conference comes not long after Bell announced it reached an agreement to…
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By Steve Faguy
MONTREAL — RNC Média is flipping two of its music stations to hybrid sports talk to create a network of French-language sports talk stations in Quebec.
Called BPM Sports (in reference to beats-per-minute measurement of heart rate), the new network launches Aug. 29 with a new lineup that includes morning man Jean-Charles Lajoie and former 98.5 FM host Paul Houde, and collaborators including former TSN Radio host Tony Marinaro and former Montreal mayor Denis Coderre.
In addition to 91.9 Sports in Montreal, the new network takes over RNC’s Vibe top-40 music stations in Quebec City and Gatineau.
“It’s not a…
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OTTAWA – When the federal government announced it was proposing a new telecommunications policy direction to the CRTC back in May, it emphasized how it would improve competition.
This is supposed to help ensure telecommunications services are affordable and encourage innovation in the industry.
The proposed policy direction compels the CRTC to consider, among other things, how its decisions “encourage all forms of competition and investment”. But while several telecommunications service providers (TSPs) that submitted comments to the government on the proposed policy direction seem to agree competition is important, there is disagreement on what kind of competition the CRTC…
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MONTREAL — Bell announced today it has been recognized for its environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance in corporate responsibility and environmental standards by Corporate Knights magazine.
Bell was named the top telecom and fourth company in Canada overall on Corporate Knights’ Best 50 Corporate Citizens list, an annual ranking that “evaluates 332 of the largest Canadian companies on a set of 24 environmental, social and governance (ESG) indicators to single out the Best 50 that Corporate Knights considers ‘the vanguard of corporate sustainability leadership in Canada,’” a Bell press release explains.
Only three telecom providers made the list: BCE Inc….
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TORONTO – The Ontario government announced today it is helping bring high-speed Internet access to up to 266,000 homes and businesses as it seeks to connect all premises in the province by the end of 2025.
“The province has signed agreements with eight internet service providers to bring access to as many as 339 municipalities across Ontario,” a press release explains. “The internet service providers were selected through a two-stage competitive process and are part of Ontario’s historic investment of nearly $4 billion to bring access to reliable high-speed internet across the province.”
The process used by the government…
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SEATTLE – Telus was Canada’s fastest national mobile operator and Shaw was the fastest fixed broadband service provider amongst the country’s top providers in the second quarter of 2022, according to Seattle-based broadband and mobile network testing company Ookla, which released its Q2 2022 results today.
Mobile
Ookla reported Telus had a median download speed of 79.09 Mbps. Bell, meanwhile, had a median speed of 72.46 Mbps and Rogers had a median speed of 60.36 Mbps. (Please see chart above.)
Rogers, however, had the fastest median upload speed for Q2 2022 at 9.21 Mbps compared to Telus (7.98 Mbps) and Bell (7.42…
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