OTTAWA – The CRTC will kick off the first part of its Discoverability Summit on December 1st in Vancouver.
Co-hosted by CRTC chair Jean-Pierre Blais and NFB Commissioner Claude Joli-Coeur, attendance at ‘En route to the Discoverability Summit: Content in the Age of Abundance’ is by invitation only, but the event will be live streamed on the CRTC’s YouTube channel.
The confab promises to feature international experts, thought leaders and high-profile innovators to explore how new tools and techniques can be used to help viewers find the content they want and help solve the global challenge of audiovisual content discoverability. CBC Radio Spark host…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Despite a spike in mobile and Internet TV viewing, the time that Canadians spent viewing traditional television in 2014 held steady, says the third and final installment of the CRTC’s 2015 Communications Monitoring Report.
The report, released Thursday, provides an overview of the Canadian broadcasting industry for the year ended August 31, 2014. The Commission previously released reports on the communication system and the telecom sector.
While the time spent watching conventional television declined slightly across all age groups in 2014, the overall average remained stable at 27.4 hours each week compared to 27.9 hours in…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has turned down a request by Ontario’s Bruce Power that it order wireless service providers to carry and deliver emergency public alerts to all Canadians with mobile phones starting this fall.
As Cartt.ca reported in June, Bruce Power submitted that because the vast majority of Canadians own mobile devices and carry them throughout the day, the distribution of alerts via these devices would be a practical way to notify Canadians of imminent threats to life and property. It wanted the system in place by September 30, 2015.
The Commission said Wednesday that Bruce Power’s four month…
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OTTAWA – Bell Mobility, Rogers and Telus must disclose their interim wholesale wireless rates within the next week after the CRTC found in favour of a disclosure of information request from Vaxination Informatique.
Vaxination filed a request for disclosure of all the confidential information in the wholesale wireless roaming interim tariffs issued on June 4, 2015 by the national wireless carriers, part of the Commission’s decision on wholesale mobile wireless services issued last May.
In a letter to the big three wireless carriers dated October 27, the CRTC said that it rejected submissions opposing the request, saying that the disclosure is…
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OTTAWA–GATINEAU – Some two thirds of Canadians own a smartphone, and nearly half of Canadians use tablets, according to the 2015 edition of the CRTC’s Communications Monitoring Report.
The report, released Tuesday, is an overview of the six sectors of the telecommunications industry including local, long distance, Internet, wireless, data, and private line. It is the second of three parts in the Communications Monitoring Report.
The adoption of smartphones and tablets continues to grow, with 67% of Canadians owning a smartphone in 2014 compared to 62% in 2013. Tablet ownership increased to 49% compared to 39% year-over-year. The percentage of Canadians…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Two home-improvement companies have paid a total of $170,000 as part of settlements over violations to Canada's telemarketing rules, the CRTC said Monday.
Acting on complaints, the Commission investigated Canadian Choice Home Improvements Inc. and Le Groupe Hydro Hvac Inc. for presumed violations of the Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules. The investigations established that Canadian Choice Home Improvements Inc. was registered but failed to subscribe to the national do not call list (DNCL), and that Le Groupe Hydro Hvac Inc. had not registered nor subscribed to the list during specific timeframes. Both companies contacted consumers who are registered on the…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has wrapped up a fact-finding exercise with Canada’s wireless service providers as part of its review of next-generation 9-1-1 services.
In a letter to the country’s WSP’s dated October 23, 2015, the Commission acknowledged that the companies have “proactively deployed hybrid location determination technologies that combine handset capabilities with network capabilities to offer the most accurate caller-location information possible to PSAPs”. This includes assisted-GPS and network-based technologies such as tower location, Round-trip time, and Advanced Forward Link Trilateration.
The CRTC said in the letter that it expects WSPs to continue to invest in the best-available wireless location…
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OTTAWA – All Canadian telecom service providers must continue to be members of the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS), at least for now, says the CRTC.
The Commission issued the interim decision Friday, as it continues to review the structure and mandate of the CCTS. The CCTS is an independent organization designed to resolve complaints between consumers and their telecommunications service provider.
With the current membership requirement set to expire on December 20, 2015, before the Commission has made its determinations related to the review, the CRTC said that this decision “will provide regulatory certainty”.
www.crtc.gc.cawww.ccts-cprst.ca
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OTTAWA – Late Thursday, Bell Canada applied to the Federal Court of Appeal for leave to appeal the CRTC’s recently announced Wholesale Code of conduct which it established for the TV industry as part of its Let’s Talk TV policy review process.
The Commission released the Code September 24th.
The CRTC has overstepped its jurisdiction with this Code, says the Bell application to the court. “The purpose of the Wholesale Code is to govern the commercial relationships between Programming and Distribution Undertakings. In doing so, the Wholesale Code conflicts with the Copyright Act and exceeds the CRTC’s…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – For the first time, more Canadians subscribe exclusively to mobile wireless services than to wired landline telephone services, according to the 2015 edition of the CRTC’s Communications Monitoring Report on the state of Canada’s communications system.
The report, released Thursday, provides an overview of the Canadian communication industry for the year ended August 31, 2014. As it did last year, the Commission will release the report in three parts, with data on the telecommunications sector and broadcasting sector still to come.
According to the report, 20.4% of Canadians opted solely for mobile wireless services than their traditional landline telephone…
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