OTTAWA – The ongoing rift between CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais and Ontario regional commissioner Raj Shoan appears to have deepened, after Blais allegedly refused to approve Shoan's proposed travel for 2015-16.
According to a Canadian Press report this week, Blais nixed Shoan’s potential trips to Las Vegas, Amsterdam, New York City and Mont Tremblant, travel that totaled $78,000. Shoan later reduced the amount to $48,000 "under protest," describing it instead as a wish list of conferences and meetings from which he invited Blais to pick and choose which ones to approve.
"Given that you have refused to provide me with…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The CRTC will be recognized with a 2015 Public Service Award of Excellence this fall for its work on modernizing northern telecommunications.
The Public Service Award of Excellence recognizes employees who have demonstrated excellence in achieving results for Canadians and who reflect the priorities of the public service, while demonstrating key leadership competencies. Commission employees will receive an award in the category of Excellence in Policy.
For the first time in its history, the CRTC travelled north of the Arctic Circle to hold a public hearing in Inuvik. The CRTC said that the regulatory policy that resulted…
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GATINEAU and YELLOWKNIFE – Northwestel has told the CRTC that unless it's allowed to levy a $20 per customer surcharge on standalone residential DSL customers in band H1 communities or receives an exogenous price cap adjustment of $8.5 million, its plans to continue a rollout of 15/1 Mbps Internet service to 42 more communities is in jeopardy.
The company's comments come in an appeal of Telecom Decision 2015-78 in which the commission ordered Northwestel to stop charging standalone DSL customers an extra fee and to cut lower-speed retail Internet rates by 10% and higher-speed ones by 30%….
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TORONTO and GATINEAU – The way CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais has consolidated power in his office – trying to tell commissioners when and where they can speak and what they can say – runs counter to everything it means to be a CRTC commissioner, says a 57-page affidavit Ontario regional commissioner Raj Shoan has filed with the Federal Court of Canada in support of his application for a judicial review of Blais.
As Cartt.ca reported in April, Shoan filed an application for a judicial review after an internal CRTC investigation, performed by a third party, found…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The CRTC is asking Canadians to weigh in on the country’s message relay services to help it determine whether its policies are meeting users’ needs.
Teletypewriter (TTY) and Internet protocol (IP) relay services, together called message relay services, provide a means of communication to people who are Deaf or hard of hearing and people with speech disabilities.
In a teletypewriter relay service call, the relay operator communicates with the person who has a hearing or speech disability via TTY (text) and with the person without a hearing or speech disability via voice. A person who is Deaf, hard of…
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BANFF – While the future of television seems to have hogged the spotlight lately, CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais told broadcasters on Thursday that radio stations, like TV broadcasters, must be innovative and focused on the future in order to survive.
Speaking at the annual conference of the Western Association of Broadcasters in what he described as the first part of a two-part speech (with the second part to be delivered at the Banff World Media Festival), Blais said that radio does more than just inform, educate and entertain. It also “forms important connections to local communities across the country” and is still the first…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Led by the country’s sports services, Canadian specialty, pay, PPV and VoD television services generated revenues of $4.2 billion in 2014, up 3.1% over the $4.1 billion earned the previous year, according to the CRTC’s statistical and financial report for this sector released Thursday.
Pay, Pay-per-view, Video-on-demand and Specialty Services 2010-2014 said that the increase is largely attributable to a jump in subscription revenues of $160.3 million (or 5.9%) compared to 2013, which more than compensated for the drop of $53.6 million (or -4.2%) in national advertising revenues.
A major driving force for growth in specialty service revenues was…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The CRTC has kicked off a public consultation on whether the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS) should expand its role to add the duties of television service ombudsman.
The review will also include an examination of the CCTS’s structure and mandate, including its administration of the Wireless Code, and the mandatory participation of telecommunications service providers. It will also address whether the CCTS needs to step up its efforts to promote itself to Canadians.
Comments are due by August 4, and a public hearing in the Ottawa area will begin on November 3, 2015.
“The communication marketplace is…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The CRTC is sponsoring a new prize for excellence in public policy research to encourage research in the communication field.
In joining together with the Canadian Communication Association (CCA) to create this prize, the CRTC said that it is continuing to build bridges with the university community as a way to encourage a new generation of researchers with the potential to contribute to Canadian information and communications policy.
The prize will be administered by the CCA and presented each year in the Master’s, Doctorate and Post-doctorate categories. Graduate-level students who are members of the CCA have until January…
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OTTAWA and TIVERTON, ON – Ontario nuclear generating facility Bruce Power has asked the CRTC to order wireless service providers to carry and deliver emergency public alerts to all Canadians with mobile phones by September 30, 2015.
In a letter dated May 29 and addressed to CRTC secretary general John Traversy, Bruce Power noted that the Commission’s mandatory distribution of emergency alert messages in 2014 only applied to broadcasters, as it waits on the outcomes of voluntary activities like the CRTC Interconnection Steering Committee’s work on developing a Wireless Public Alerting System (WPAS) using cell broadcast technology on LTE networks.
“This work…
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