By Ahmad Hathout
Officials from the federal government had tried and failed for months to get a formal response from the government of Nunavut on a revised scope for the West Hudson Fibre Link project, according to briefing material obtained by Cartt.
In December 2022, Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) conditionally approved an undisclosed amount of money – in the millions of dollars – from the Universal Broadband Fund (UBF) to connect 1,851 underserved households in Arviat, Rankin Inlet, and Coral Harbor via undersea fibre cable and bring redundancy by connecting from Churchill, Manitoba to the satellite-dependent territory.
On January 31,…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Corus Entertainment Inc. announced Thursday that it has completed the recapitalization transaction that will make it a subsidiary to a parent company holding its assets and controlled by its debtholders but guided by a board that includes a former Bell Media head.
In exchange for 99 per cent of Corus Entertainment Holdings Inc., the lenders – including Canso Investment Counsel Ltd. – forgave $500 million in debt hanging over the media company. The CRTC approved the transaction last month, conveying that the largest independent broadcaster is too important to the media and news ecosystem to fail.
“We are…
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By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC made final Wednesday Rogers’s new high-speed internet offerings to wholesale competitors.
For the eastern part of the country, Rogers sought last July to introduce speeds of 300 Mbps download and 30 Mbps upload and 300 Mbps/200 Mbps. For the west, it proposed those same speeds plus an option for 75 Mbps/50 Mbps. Because the speeds fell within the existing speed bands with approved interim rates, the cable giant did not propose new costs.
The speeds, introduced to comply with speed-matching requirements, had been in the market since September 2025 after the CRTC approved them…
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CRTC says it improved pace of cost decisions and will announce ‘further improvements in the upcoming weeks’
By Linda Stuart and Ahmad Hathout
Monica Auer, the executive director of the Forum for Research and Policy in Communications (FRPC), has asked to meet CRTC Chair Vicky Eatrides to discuss concerns about the commission’s decisions regarding reimbursing public- and consumer-interest groups for costs associated with participating in telecom proceedings.
According to an Oct. 5 letter sent to Eatrides and shared with Cartt, FRPC data show 12 public-interest organizations that have made detailed submissions in 19 of the CRTC telecom consultations held…
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Internet service provider Uplink Communications has notified the CRTC it wants to withdraw its complaint against wholesale internet service provider Frontier Networks, saying the two companies are working on a resolution to their dispute.
In August, Aylmer, Ont.-based Uplink filed a Part 1 application asking the telecom regulator to stop Etobicoke-based Frontier from further disconnecting its customers over a payment dispute until it could migrate them to a new provider.
In an Oct. 6 letter, the CRTC acknowledged receipt of Uplink’s emailed request to have the application withdrawn, adding that unless…
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By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC launched a consultation on Tuesday that could see the elimination of certain reporting requirements to better align with the goal of the federal regulatory system to reduce red tape.
The regulator said it holds the preliminary view that certain reporting requirements could be “simplified or removed immediately” without “materially impacting regulator oversight.”
The CRTC currently requires telcos to report semi-annually on 14 different quality of service indicators in areas that are forborne from regulation to ensure competitors receive a minimum standard of service. But “as technology evolves and consumers migrate away from legacy local voice services, it…
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The CRTC has told Groupe TVA it must continue to submit reports twice a month regarding the progress it has made to resolve issues related to closed captioning on its television services.
In a letter dated Oct. 2, the CRTC denied TVA’s request to reduce the frequency of these reports to once per month.
The broadcasting regulator said, since June 2025, it has received numerous complaints from TVA audience members about incorrect or missing closed captioning. TVA told the commission these errors were due to failures in TVA’s closed captioning equipment that occurred following the relocation…
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By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC on Friday adopted a proposal from the government’s Communications Research Centre (CRC) and will standardize the information carriers will be required to report to improve mobile wireless coverage mapping.
The regulator will require, at a resolution of 50 metres, annual reporting of three levels of terrestrial service: Level 1, a wireless signal strong enough to support emergency services, namely 911 calls and public alerts; Level 2, a signal strong enough to support the first level plus voice and video calls of at least 3 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload; and Level 3, a signal strong…
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By Howard Law, author of MediaPolicy.ca, and Canada vs. California: How Ottawa took on Netflix and the streaming giants (Lorimer, 2024)
Prime Minister Mark Carney recently granted the New York Times an hour-long interview about where he is taking Canada.
Canadian journalists, who would have loved that kind of access to the prime minister, were irked. What ever happened to Canadians telling Canadian stories?
But to heck with cultural irony. There’s an American audience to be educated about Canada.
An interesting item that emerged from the Times coverage was Carney’s candour about Canada’s warming relationship with the European Union. According…
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Comes after TVA Sports secured NHL rights deal from Rogers
By Ahmad Hathout
Quebecor’s Groupe TVA is stonewalling hotel television service provider Coopérative de câblodistribution Hill Valley over access to TVA Sports, a Part 1 application claims.
Hill Valley claims in the application, made public Friday, that Groupe TVA is still refusing to negotiate for the sports signal, four years after the Federal Court found Hill Valley had, for a time, violated copyright law by projecting a single signal to multiple hotel rooms without authorization.
Still, Groupe TVA allegedly wants nothing to do with Hill Valley, which…
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