The CRTC last week approved Akash Broadcasting’s acquisition of Bell Media’s radio station CFRW-AM Winnipeg, which has been off the air since June 2023.
The one-time TSN Radio station had last operated under Bell Media’s “Funny” format before its 2023 shutdown.
In its Oct. 16 decision to approve Akash’s purchase of CFRW-AM, the CRTC said it had determined the value of the transaction is $1,047,250, and thus Akash must pay tangible benefits totalling $62,835 (six per cent of the transaction value) in equal payments over seven consecutive…
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By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC has approved final attachment rates for competitors to access Bell and Telus poles.
The rates, on a per unit per month basis, are higher than those approved by the commission many years ago but are less than what the telcos asked for.
After roughly 15 years renting out its poles in Ontario and Quebec for a rate of $1.04, Bell got a final approved rate of $1.32 – 77 cents less than what it asked for. Telus’s pole attach rates for British Columbia and Alberta were bumped up from $1.61 to $2.29, 20 cents less than what…
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By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC said Friday it believes service providers should notify unhappy customers of the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services (CCTS) sooner in the complaints process.
Instead of informing customers they have recourse with the dedicated complaints watchdog only at the second level of escalation (first being the proposed telecom solution), the CRTC now believes telecoms should tell customers about the CCTS at the same time they offer that solution regardless of whether that resolution is favourable to the customer. The “offered solution” is defined by the CRTC as a written proposal intended to close the complaint, which…
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Consultation triggered by Feb. 2024 complaint
By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC has launched a consultation Thursday to see whether it should force certain — and a broader base of — broadcasters to better facilitate accessibility of their services.
“The CRTC has heard that some content is hard to access for persons who are blind or partially sighted, and is working to identify, remove and prevent these barriers,” the CRTC said in a press release Thursday.
The key amendment the regulator is proposing is the removal of a qualifier under section 7.3 of the Broadcasting Distribution Regulations, which stipulates that broadcasters…
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Proposing one-year trial for spoken word on FM
By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC on Friday abolished radio licence renewal periods, thereby making licenses indefinite with regular compliance audits that it says will streamline the process and reduce the burden on both the industry and the commission itself.
The regulator said it was often processing over 300 licence renewal applications every year, with multiple rounds of information requested from each station. But it found that the vast majority of stations were in “full compliance at all times, and most of the non-compliance was minor and could be addressed easily.”
The new Broadcasting Act allows…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Several major telecoms have filed a review and vary application asking the CRTC to adjust its new outage reporting requirements and extend the deadline to implement them because they are currently “impractical or disproportionate” and impose “undue administrative burden” on their businesses.
The CRTC in September gave all telecoms two months to implement the new rules, which require them to report to certain official bodies major outages – newly defined as lasting at least 30 minutes and affecting 600,000 or more user minutes in most cases. Compared to the interim regime from 2023, the new…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Cogeco is asking the Federal Court of Appeal to force the CRTC to make a decision on a joint complaint it made with Bell late last year alleging a Quebecor internet radio station is broadcasting on a commercial FM station illegally.
In August 2024, Quebecor made a deal with Leclerc Communication, the owner of commercial radio station CJPX-FM (99.5 FM) in Montreal, allowing Quebecor’s internet radio station QUB Radio to operate on those airwaves during primetime Monday through Friday.
“In the hyper-competitive world of Montreal radio, the upheavals of recent months in talk radio offer…
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By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC’s vice president of broadcasting said Wednesday that some of the base contribution money collected from online streamers, which is to be delivered to Canadian content funds, has already been released, despite a court-ordered stay of that policy.
Scott Shortliffe told the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, in a briefing about the implementation of the Online Streaming Act, that the streamers’ money from the previous broadcast year – which ended on August 31 – has been collected by an independent company and that some of the money has already been delivered.
“We understand that the money has been…
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By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC on Friday denied applications from Bell and Ontario charging that the commission made an error in a previous decision by failing to clarify that it had exclusive jurisdiction over long-distance calls in correctional facilities.
The commission said Friday that this issue was not central to its 2024 decision – which determined that those call rates were forborne from regulation since 1997 and it did not have authority to retroactively adjust the rates charged by Bell between 2013 and 2021 – and that the Telecommunications Act does not give the CRTC “authorities in exclusive…
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The CRTC last Friday denied an August 2024 application for relief from Iristel following the disconnection of its telecommunications services by Northwestel.
The commission had previously denied an Iristel review-and-vary application regarding the CRTC’s June 2024 decision that found Iristel did not provide sufficient evidence showing it was wronged in an interconnection dispute with Bell and its subsidiary Northwestel.
In its latest decision on the matter, the CRTC said the record shows Iristel did not enter into a deferred payment agreement with Northwestel within the prescribed deadline….
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