By Ken Kelley
OTTAWA – An exchange between a Telus executive and a Calgary MP got a little heated late Thursday during a virtual meeting of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology
The bulk of the tension stemmed from a line of questioning directed at Telus EVP and chief customer officer Tony Geheran by Conservative MP Michelle Rempel-Garner (Calgary Nose Hill).
After asking the executive for the company’s cost per gigabyte when it comes to serving its customers (something Geheran said he didn’t have at hand and offered to send after the meeting) and noting that the figure doesn’t seem…
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OTTAWA — The Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services (CCTS) reported early Tuesday a 12% decrease in the number of complaints it received from Canadian telecom and TV customers between August 1, 2019 and January 31, 2020, following a 44% increase for that same six-month period last year.
The CCTS accepted a total of 8,621 complaints in the time frame and resolved 90% of all complaints. There were 46 confirmed wireless code breaches, five TV service provider code breaches and three deposit and disconnection code breaches.
The main contributors to the decline were Cogeco and Bell, with Cogeco recording a 75%…
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By Greg O’Brien
“THERE’S A WASTE OF two hours,” was my thought after listening to the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology on Thursday evening.
Not just my own time. Everyone’s.
The meeting notice said only that the INDU committee was looking at the Canadian response to the Covid-19 pandemic, but with a witness list of Jay Thomson, CEO of the Canadian Communication Systems Alliance; Ian Stevens, CEO of independent broadband provider Execulink; Andy Kaplan-Myrth, vice-president, regulatory and carrier affairs at TekSavvy; two rural politicians – Steve Arnold, mayor of St. Clair Township and Rob Gay, the board chair of the…
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TORONTO — Aptum Technologies (formerly Cogeco Peer 1) announced today it has completed a transaction with Beanfield Metroconnect for the acquisition of Aptum’s WAN (wide area network) business. Both companies are owned by global digital infrastructure investor Digital Colony.
The agreement between the two companies allows Aptum to focus on growing its data centre and hybrid multi-cloud solution offerings, while the addition of Aptum’s metro networks in Toronto and Montreal enhances Beanfield’s connectivity and fibre solutions, says the news release.
“We are confident that sharpening our long-term focus by investing more time and resources into the growth and enhancement…
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MONTREAL – Cogeco Communications has appointed Frédéric Perron as president of Cogeco Connexion, effective September 1, 2020. He will be based at the division’s Ontario headquarters in Burlington.
Perron (pictured in his LinkedIn photo) has over 20 years of managerial experience at international telecommunications and financial services companies such as T-Mobile, Vodafone, and Capital One. He replaced Ken Smithard, who retired earlier this year.
“Frédéric is a strong leader, who excels in combining strategic vision, commercial management and operational efficiency and I look forward to him joining our organization and sharing his breadth of experience,” said Philippe Jetté, Cogeco’s president and…
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MONTREAL – Cogeco Communications today announced it has signed a deal to acquire iTéract Inc., a telecommunications service provider in southern Quebec.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
iTéract uses a combination of fixed-wireless and fibre-to-the-home technologies to serve approximately 2,000 customers in large rural regions south of Montreal and Quebec City.
“Given the exceptional circumstances due to the Covid-19 crisis, the parties will work to ensure an orderly closing of the transaction, which is expected in the coming weeks,” says the press release. For the time being, it will continue to operate under its brand name, Internexe.
As part of the transaction,…
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TORONTO — Cogeco TV customers in Quebec now have access to Hollywood Suite’s four HD channels of commercial-free movies, as well as Hollywood Suite On Demand and the Hollywood Suite Go streaming app.
Already available on Cogeco TV in Ontario as well as BDUs across the country, Hollywood Suite launched yesterday in Quebec on Cogeco TV channel numbers 705-708 (TiVo and legacy). Cogeco subscribers in Quebec can take advantage of a 30-day free preview of Hollywood Suite until May 21.
“We are thrilled to work with Cogeco to bring Hollywood Suite to the Québec market,” said David Kines, president and co-founder…
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HALIFAX — To help entertain families while socially distancing at home during the Covid-19 pandemic, kids channel Toon-A-Vision announced Tuesday it is launching on Cogeco and will be available free to all Cogeco customers on channel 729 as of April 22, 2020.
“Toon-A-Vision’s newest partnership with Cogeco means more Canadian families will have access to fresh new shows they’ve never seen before,” says Adam Mimnagh, president of Toon-A-Vision, in the news release. “We provide safe, but funny content that isn’t available in Canada on other children’s networks, or streaming services, which gives us that special something that we think families…
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By Ahmad Hathout
THE CANADIAN NETWORK OPERATORS Consortium (CNOC) is facing fresh denials from some incumbents to a request by the organization to lift certain network restrictions during the Covid-19 crisis.
The three-part ask from CNOC, which represents smaller third party internet access operators that rent part of the network of the larger providers, includes a lifting of capacity restraints free-of-charge, expedited network augmentations through more physical interconnections, and wholesale payment term flexibility of 60 additional days to help support customers who are unable to pay on time.
The letter was sent over the course of the past couple of weeks to…
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MONTREAL — Cogeco Connexion reported Tuesday it has seen a significant increase in traffic on all of its services over the past month as teleworking and greater use of online educational and digital entertainment platforms have caused peaks in network utilization during the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to the news release, Cogeco has experienced the following network traffic increases in the last month:
Approximately 60% greater use of its Internet services during the day and about 25% at night;
40% increase in traffic for its video-on-demand services and growth of between 20% and 40% for other video streaming services, including…
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