Eastlink announced Thursday the expansion of its internet services to communities in New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador using the wholesale fibre regime.
The communities in New Brunswick include Moncton, Fredericton, Saint John, Miramichi, Tracadie and Bathurst and the capital city St. John’s in Newfoundland.
Eastlink already has its own mobile network in these communities, which it plans to bundle with these new internet services.
“The current wholesale regulatory framework has caused us to consider different ways of expanding our service footprint where investing in building new networks is no longer viable,” CEO Jeff Gillham said in a press release. “This includes…
Continue Reading
By Connie Thiessen
Disney+ has unveiled its first-ever Canadian local Originals, billed as “an important step in the streamer’s expanding investment in Canadian storytelling.”
The new greenlights include “Knighted,” a new eight-episode scripted comedy and “I’m Not Coming Back,” a three-part true-crime documentary.
Produced by Heavy Lifting Productions in association with 3 Arts Entertainment, “Knighted” follows a missing person’s case that spirals into an absurd documentary-style exploration of the sinister secrets lurking beneath a local medieval dinner theatre. Bruce McCulloch (The Kids in the Hall) developed and is executive producing, alongside creators Jackson Rowe and Mike Mildon (For Heaven’s Sake) and producers…
Continue Reading
Having become aware that Telus planned to introduce a $15 SIM purchase fee for both physical SIM cards and digital eSIMs later this week, the CRTC in a letter Tuesday informed Telus such a fee may be in violation of the commission’s new rules eliminating activation fees.
Telus is set to start the new practice on Thursday, June 11, just one day before the CRTC’s prohibition on activation, modification and cancellation fees comes into effect on Friday.
The Canadian Press on Tuesday reported on Telus’s planned $15 SIM…
Continue Reading
Telus announced Wednesday its complete Optik TV suite is now available in Ontario, offering customers flexible TV plans with access to more than 450 sports and live TV channels plus the option to bundle streaming services such as Netflix, Disney+, Crave, Prime Video and Apple TV.
Separately, the Vancouver-based telecom company also announced the expansion of its Optik TV service to the Montreal and Quebec City areas, offering customers access to more than 300 TV channels plus the aforementioned streaming services as well as illico+. Telus has offered Optik TV to customers…
Continue Reading
By Howard Law, author of MediaPolicy.ca and Canada vs. California: How Ottawa took on Netflix and the streaming giants (Lorimer, 2024)
This week’s announcement by Culture Minister Marc Miller that the federal government is striking down the CRTC’s ruling on streamer contributions to Canadian content is perhaps more shocking in its timing than its substance.
After all, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government has an appetite for jettisoning government policy that he considers unwanted baggage. Recall the climb down from the Digital Services Tax, the carbon tax, and the suite of Trudeau-era environmental policies.
Miller will be sending…
Continue Reading
By Ahmad Hathout
Bell said it has reached an agreement with Telus that will allow the Vancouver-based telco to carry its broadcasting services over Bell’s fibre network in eastern Canada.
Bell confirmed the agreement but not the details after the CRTC said in a letter, dated Tuesday, that it was closing Telus’s Part 1 application filed last year that alleged Bell was unduly blocking its ability to carry content on the fibre network.
Telus, which requested closure of the Part 1, said in its original application that it wanted the CRTC to force Bell to allow it to carry…
Continue Reading
Announces $600M in new money for broadcasting system
By Ahmad Hathout and Linda Stuart
Culture Minister Marc Miller announced Wednesday that he is directing the CRTC to review its recent decision to regulate online streamers and Canadian broadcasters, which sets out mandatory contributions toward the broadcasting system.
The CRTC’s new requirements, which raises to 15 per cent the financial obligation on foreign streamers, “would impose new costs on the companies providing these services, which could ultimately fall on Canadian consumers through higher prices,” said a Canadian Heritage press release Wednesday. The regulator…
Continue Reading
By Ahmad Hathout
Rogers can force a competitor to connect at a traffic hand-off point of its choosing because its commission-approved tariff allows it, the CRTC ruled Thursday.
Cambridge, Ont.-based Fibernetics argued in a 2024 Part 1 application that Rogers was forcing it to connect its fibre half a kilometre away from the cable giant’s head-end facility in Calgary because Fibernetics was using a third-party, not Rogers, to route the traffic back to its office. Fibernetics, which was backed by other wholesale-based competitors claiming similar experiences, argued this effectively disadvantaged it because Rogers was forcing a competing internet…
Continue Reading
By Ahmad Hathout
The Shaw Rocket Fund has filed for a court review of a CRTC decision last month that did not require Rogers to continue paying into the fund beyond August 2025 — and did not find a public hearing was warranted on the matter.
The Federal Court of Appeal application, dated May 21, seeks clarification about whether an administrative renewal of Rogers’s licence – which involved no public consultation – meant that the commission effectively extended for the rest of the term that funding mandate, which was a condition of approving the cable giant’s purchase of Shaw Communications’s broadcasting…
Continue Reading
The CRTC has opened a proceeding regarding a February application from Corus Entertainment seeking approval to change the ownership of all its licensed programming services to a new parent company as part of Corus’s recapitalization plan that it announced in November.
That plan, which received court approval in March from the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, is designed to reduce the financially troubled media company’s third-party debt and other liabilities by more than $500 million.
Under a proposed debt-for-equity recapitalization transaction, some of Corus’s lenders would forgive approximately $500 million in debt in exchange for…
Continue Reading
