TORONTO – The season three premiere of HBO drama True Detective will debut during Crave’s first-ever free preview this weekend, parent Bell Media said Tuesday.
Three of Crave’s linear channels – Crave 1, HBO 1, HBO 2 – are being unlocked from Friday, January 11 (11 AM ET/MT) to Monday, January 14 (11 AM ET/MT), allowing audiences to sample over 15 Hollywood hit movies uncut and commercial-free, top HBO content, and a selection of Showtime hits.
The free preview is available via participating television providers across Canada including Bell, Bell Aliant, BellMTS, Cogeco, Eastlink, Rogers, Shaw, Shaw Direct, and Telus, among…
Continue Reading
TWO YEARS AGO, on December 21, 2016, the CRTC acknowledged the increasing importance of Internet services to Canadians in Telecom Regulatory Policy 2016-496, in which the Commission defined fixed and mobile wireless broadband Internet access services as basic telecommunications services.
The Commission also established several new expectations for ISPs to address consumer complaints related to bill shock and contract clarity.
As a result, all ISPs that provide retail fixed broadband Internet services to individual and small business customers now must ensure their contracts and related documents clearly explain, in plain language (i) the services included in the contract (ii) any limits…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA and GATINEAU – The CRTC has set new standards for text-based message relay services to help improve the service for hearing or speech impaired Canadians.
Message relay services (MRS) enable Canadians with a hearing or a speech disability to make and receive telephone calls via text with the assistance of a relay operator. The CRTC has long required that home phone providers offer MRS to customers 24 hours per day, seven days per week, first through teletypewriter (TTY) relay service and then through IP relay services, too.
The Commission said Friday that mobile wireless service providers (WSPs) must begin offering…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA – The CRTC has sided with Frontier Networks in its dispute with Eastlink over reselling its high-speed access (HSA) services.
In April, Frontier requested expedited interim relief and final relief regarding the refusal of Bragg Communications Inc. (carrying on business as Eastlink), to allow it to continue to resell HSA service to its two reseller customers. Interim relief was granted by the CRTC in May.
On Tuesday, the Commission made Frontier’s interim relief final after finding that its interpretation of Eastlink’s Third-Party Internet Access General Tariff is correct. It also directed Eastlink to file revised Tariff pages within 30 …
Continue Reading
HAMILTON – Community television channel Cable 14 is behind a series of public service announcements designed to promote Hamilton Food Share’s organizations and programs to local residents in need.
Through a campaign called ‘14 Ways To Feed The Hammer’, the PSAs will feature not only how these organizations support individuals over the holidays, but how they ensure that vulnerable citizens have access to food all year round. According to the news release, approximately 10,000 Hamilton households will reach out to the emergency food system for assistance in providing their family with the celebrations that many of us take for…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA – The Connecting Families program which was announced in June by Navdeep Bains, Minister of Industry, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) at the Telecom Summit, in Toronto was unveiled this week.
The government is not subsidizing ISPs to provide the low-cost Internet service but is investing $13.2 million over five years to refurbish and deliver up to 50,000 computers to eligible families through the Computers for Success Canada program, as well as to develop a secure online portal through which eligible families can sign up for the initiative and access the low-cost Internet service and/or a refurbished computer.
This Continue Reading
TORONTO – Length matters.
That's one of the findings of a poll of Canadian TV viewers and the video content they consume which was conducted by Charlton Strategic Research, and unveiled Tuesday at the CTAM Broadcaster’s Forum in Toronto on Tuesday.
Charlton's Gord Hendren told conference attendees that an online survey of 3,168 Canadians over 18 years of age revealed the total time spent watching long-form video content, or over five minutes in length, is up among total Canadian TV viewers.
Millennials, though, are bucking the trend.
Hendren said his poll revealed younger Canadian TV viewers from 18-34 years of age spend less…
Continue Reading
TORONTO – The CRTC’s 2015 decision to move from an aggregated to disaggregated wholesale high-speed access service (HSA) model has ended up placing enormous cost increases on independent ISPs and will further limit competitiveness with a coming cap on Internet speeds, said Matt Stein, president of the Canadian Network Operators Consortium.
“Without changes to the disaggregated regime, our industry will be prevented from keeping prices sane, innovating, and delivering the improved customer relationship we’re known for,” Stein said in a keynote on Tuesday at the 2018 Canadian ISP Summit in Toronto. (He's pictured in a snap borrowed from Distributel's Twitter…
Continue Reading
The TV tax battle
By Phil Lind with Robert Brehl
FEW THINGS GET ME SEETHING like the Canadian television networks’ attempted fee-for-carriage cash grab, the so-called “TV tax.” After everything cable did to increase their TV licences’ value over the years, in 2006 the broadcasters ignited a six-year battle to get us to pay them for carrying their signals. It went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, and they came very close to winning.
Just writing this raises my hackles. Ken Engelhart and Jan Innes would joke that fee-for-carriage was my “Wullerton.” I had no idea what they meant…
Continue Reading
GATINEAU – Back in August, when the CRTC and researcher Ipsos launched a survey on what Canadians think of the sales practices of Canadian telecom companies, much private (and some public) hue and cry arose from the carriers across the country.
The tight timeline for Ipsos to finish the survey and the weak overall structure and wording of the questions could only lead to negative answers, they said. They were right. The results came back substantially negative, but does that mean they have a point? Does the survey’s supposedly skewed queries mean the results should be tossed out?
Consumers and consumer…
Continue Reading
