By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – Innovation Canada and the CRTC have released an advance notice today stating they intend to award a $1.5-million contract to a broadband measurement company to collect performance data on fixed-wireless speed claims of up to 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload – the federal objective.
In the notice, ISED said it is seeking only data from wireless service providers claiming to provide Internet service of “up to” 50/10 to households over wireless signals for verification purposes. The contractor will test performance by metric, time, location, service plan, distance to service towers and technology, according to…
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MONTREAL — Cogeco Inc. and Cogeco Communications Inc. announced today Louis Audet (above), chair of the companies’ boards of directors, has been awarded the title of Officer of the Ordre national du Québec.
The honour is to be bestowed during a ceremony tomorrow. Also making the list is Quebecor Inc.’s president and CEO, Pierre Karl Péladeau, according to information posted last week on the Ordre national du Québec website.
The National Order of Québec is the highest distinction awarded by the Government of Québec, explains a Cogeco press release.
“It recognizes…
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OTTAWA — The Cable Public Affairs Channel (CPAC) will be celebrating an important milestone this weekend — June 12 marks CPAC’s 30 years of providing viewers with unfiltered coverage of Canadian Parliament, politics and public affairs.
“Created for Canadians in 1992 by a consortium of cable companies to preserve an independent editorial voice for Canada’s democratic process, CPAC quickly became Canadians’ go-to resource for commercial free, gavel-to-gavel coverage of parliamentary proceedings,” reads a press release highlighting CPAC’s upcoming 30th anniversary.
Over the years, the channel’s coverage has grown to include House of Commons and Senate committee meetings, Supreme Court of Canada…
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OTTAWA – Last week, the CRTC posted a part one application from several service providers who came together to ask the Commission to review the wholesale roaming tariff rates of the country’s national wireless carriers (Bell Mobility, Rogers Communications and Telus Communications), calling them “manifestly unjust and unreasonable”.
“This application deals with the flagrant overcharging for wholesale roaming – an essential service that stands as one of the central pillars of the Commission’s policy framework for ensuring sustainable competition in the provision of mobile wireless services in Canada,” reads the application, which was filed by regional competitors Bragg Communications Inc….
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OTTAWA — CBC/Radio-Canada’s Media Technology Monitor (MTM) today released a new report that shows the number of Canadians, both English and French-speaking, who subscribe to paid TV services is still relatively high.
“Although paid TV subscriptions have been in decline for over a decade, they still remain fairly high with 69% of anglophone households having a paid TV service,” reads a press release highlighting MTM’s findings for the English Canadian paid TV market.
For French-speaking Canada, the percentage of households that subscribe to paid TV services is approximately 75% (three out of four), according to MTM’s research on the French market.
In…
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OTTAWA – The Government of Canada today highlighted over $435.5 million in funding to bring high-speed Internet service to thousands of homes in Ontario.
Seven separate announcements were made today, which provided details for multiple projects that will benefit from the $1.2-billion partnership between the federal and Ontario governments announced last July. The partnership between the two levels of government is to bring high-speed Internet access to over 280,000 households across the province.
The first announcement from today included over $96 million to connect 22,546 Ontario households. The details are as follows:
Digital Infrastructure Group Inc. is receiving $45 million…
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OTTAWA — The governments of Canada and Ontario today announced more than $56 million in new combined federal and provincial funding for six projects to bring high-speed Internet access to more than 6,500 households in rural northern and southwestern Ontario, including several First Nation communities.
These new projects build on the two governments’ existing $1.2-billion partnership, announced in July 2021, that is designed to support “large-scale, fibre-based projects that will provide high-speed Internet access to more than 280,000 rural and remote households across the province,” explains a press release from the Canadian government.
According to a separate backgrounder,…
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SEATTLE – Telus Communications was the fastest mobile operator of Canada’s top providers in the first quarter of 2022, according to mobile and broadband testing company Ookla.
Ookla’s more recent quarterly report, released today, shows Telus had a median download speed of 94.48 Mbps, which was faster than Bell (86.06 Mbps), Rogers (71.7 Mbps), Fido (66.85 Mbps), Videotron (58.82 Mbps) and Freedom Mobile (45 Mbps). (Please see chart above.)
Freedom meanwhile scored the lowest latency score for Q1 2022. Ookla reported Freedom’s median latency was 18 ms, Rogers and Fido’s median latencies were both 23 ms, Telus and Bell were both…
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Updated with comment from petitioner, dotmobile.
OTTAWA — The federal cabinet has denied a petition today to overturn a decision by the CRTC that only allowed a limited group of wireless service providers to force negotiations to use national telecom facilities, saying it believes the decision will provide consumers with greater choice and bring down prices.
Mobile virtual network operator Data on Tap (dotmobile) filed the petition in May 2021 to reverse the part of the CRTC’s decision that excludes full MVNOs like itself from participating in those mandatory negotiations. The decision by the regulator…
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MONTREAL — Cogeco Inc. announced yesterday that its revenues and profits increased in its fiscal second quarter compared to the same period last year, with activity south of the border helping drive those numbers.
For the period ending on February 28, revenues increased by 14.5% to $748.1 million and profits increased 7.8% to $118.8 million versus the comparable period last year, with carry from its purchase last year of the broadband facilities of WideOpenWest in Ohio and organic growth in the US, as well as the purchase of Quebec’s Derytelecom in late 2020.
Revenues from American broadband services — called…
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