$4.3-million Grey County broadband project now underway
SIMCOE and GREY COUNTY, Ont. — In two separate announcements last week, Southwestern Integrated Fibre Technology (SWIFT) announced the awarding of funding to support $41.1 million in broadband upgrades for Simcoe County and $4.3 million in upgrades for Grey County, both located in southwestern Ontario.
In Simcoe County, six fibre-to-the-home projects (three by Bell, and one each by Vianet, Cogeco and Rogers) will expand broadband services to 12,700 households and businesses. SWIFT has awarded more than $18.6 million in federal and provincial funding to service 500 kilometres of underserved roadway to connect more than…
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By Peter Nowak
IMAGINE, FOR A SECOND, someone making fun of you for being too skinny. Then they take all your food away.
Got that image in your mind? Okay, good. You’ve just pictured what trying to grow a telecom business in Canada is like.
For years, that’s essentially what big companies such as Bell, Rogers and Shaw and their armies of lawyers, lobbyists and hangers-on have been doing to TekSavvy and other independent service providers.
They’ve argued that the only good telecom company in Canada is one that builds its own networks head-to-toe, from the poles that hold the wires in the…
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By Denis Carmel
QUEBEC – Former CRTC Commissioner, Suzanne Lamarre is heavily involved in the government of Québec’s effort to speed the deployment of high-speed internet in rural and remote regions funded through the Québec Branché program.
We first heard of this when Bell issued a news release on October 30, announcing new measures to simplify the process of having access to its support structures. The same day, the CRTC announced potential regulatory measures to make access to poles owned by Canadian carriers more efficient.
“To accelerate the implementation of funded projects and meet deadlines, the Quebec government has set…
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OTTAWA — Consumer complaints to the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services (CCTS) decreased 19% this year compared to last, according to the organization’s 2019-20 annual report released this morning.
This is the first year-over-year decline in the number of complaints reaching the CCTS since the 2015-16 fiscal year, says this year’s report, which covers the period from August 1, 2019 to July 31, 2020.
In total, 15,868 complaints were filed this year, with 89% of them being successfully resolved by the parties following CCTS’s intervention. These complaints raised almost 43,000 issues, with the most common complaints related to billing problems,…
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MONTREAL — Cogeco Connexion, Videotron and Quebec municipal ISP Maskicom are banding together to demand that Bell implement “real solutions” to resolve major problems with access to its telephone poles, saying previously announced measures fall short.
“Bell’s anti-competitive and unfair practices are significantly limiting the ability of ISPs to deliver high-speed Internet expansion projects to rural communities in Québec,” says a press release jointly issued today by the three Quebec ISPs.
“Cogeco Connexion, Maskicom and Videotron do not believe the ‘seven regulatory easements’ announced by Bell on October 30 will solve the current problems in any way, as none of…
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And why there’s much more to rural connectivity than funding
By Lynn Greiner
AN ADDITIONAL $1.75 BILLION for rural broadband, which the federal government announced this month, is certainly a good step, albeit delayed, in the right direction. But, it’s not enough.
“It’s not a silver bullet,” said Telus vice-president telecom policy and chief regulatory legal counsel Stephen Schmidt during the Canadian Telecom Summit’s annual Regulatory Blockbuster session on Wednesday. “It won’t work on its own… In our view, complementary spectrum policy reform is an essential companion piece that will ensure that the networks that get built with or without public…
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GATINEAU — Having already extended the deadline once for submissions to its proceeding regarding the appropriate network and service configurations for disaggregated wholesale high-speed access (HSA) services, the CRTC says it won’t delay the proceeding further by agreeing to add procedural steps requested by the Competitive Network Operators of Canada (CNOC).
The Commission launched the proceeding in June, and then revised the deadlines in July, making interventions due by October 5 and replies due by December 7, 2020.
However, on November 2, CNOC sent a letter to the CRTC asking for a Commission order to address alleged instances of…
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Report due by February
By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – The federal government’s pledge to have wireless prices drop by 25% is expected to be studied during House of Commons hearings into accessibility and affordability of telecommunications services, starting next week.
The committee on industry will begin the proceedings on Tuesday with witnesses Telesat and Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX). Both satellite companies made news over the past two weeks as they push low earth orbit satellites to colve rural broadband coverage. The former this week formalized a $600-million agreement for the federal government to purchase satellite capacity to serve…
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By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – To no one’s surprise, Bell Canada and the large cable companies have sought leave to appeal the Federal Court of Appeal decision of September 10, 2020, over CRTC Decision 2019-288 (about the fees third party internet access ISPs pay to the incumbents) to the Supreme Court of Canada.
Bell adopted the reasoning put forward by the large cable carriers (Rogers, Shaw, Videotron, Cogeco, and Eastlink) and let them argue more at depth the issues at hand.
Their argument seems to focus on, besides the basic issues they contended before when they went to the Federal Court…
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CHATHAM, Ont. — Independent ISP TekSavvy today voiced appreciation for the federal government’s launch yesterday of its $1.7-billion Universal Broadband Fund, which will provide subsidies for broadband infrastructure projects in rural and remote Canadian communities.
The company also welcomed the Canadian government’s $600-million agreement with Telesat to subsidize satellite-based Internet providers, as well as the Ontario government’s announcement last week of its plan to spend almost $1 billion over six years to improve and expand broadband and cellular access across the province.
In a press release today, TekSavvy says these historic public subsidies for rural broadband projects…
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