QUEBEC – When the Quebec provincial government needed to make decisions about which ISPs would receive funding from the Canada-Quebec Operation High Speed program, Gilles Bélanger (above), parliamentary assistant to the premier for high-speed Internet in Quebec, said they approached it like a game of Risk.
Responsible for making sure all households in Quebec have access to high-speed Internet (defined by the CRTC as 50 megabytes, minimum) by the end of September 2022, Bélanger and his team of 20 took out a map and looked at which ISPs were already providing services and where.
While the game of Risk is about…
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The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC), wrote the CRTC last week to express “serious concerns regarding the actions” of Bell, Telus, and Rogers with regards to their recently released low-cost plans.
On July 14, Bell, Telus and Rogers each released new low-cost and occasional-use plans, as directed by the CRTC in Telecommunications Regulatory Policy CRTC 2021-130. PIAC, in its letter to the CRTC, noted the policy indicated “the Commission expected that the incumbents provide at least one low-cost plan on their premium brands.”
Despite this, PIAC did not find any such plan on the any of the companies’ premium brand…
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Combined $4B in funding going into the effort
By Ahmad Hathout
TORONTO – Ontario wants to connect all households in the province to high-speed internet by December 2025, starting with a reverse auction, this summer, for billions in funding.
The province’s infrastructure ministry announced Friday the auction will be open to projects that rely predominantly on fibre, with some fixed-wireless where applicable. The ministry says fibre is future-proofed because of its ability to scale-up to speeds as high as a gigabit – and the provincial government wants these funds to be disbursed and projects to begin very quickly.
The total pot of…
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OTTAWA – Competitive Network Operators of Canada (CNOC) filed a formal appeal today, asking Cabinet to overturn a recent CRTC decision to reverse its own 2019 decision on wholesale rates charged to third party internet access providers for network access.
“In May, the CRTC, facing pressure from the large telecom and cable companies’ lobbyists and lawyers, and receiving mixed messages from the government, reversed its own 2019 decision to drastically lower the rates that smaller, independent internet service providers pay for network access,” a press release explains. CNOC requested Cabinet “overturn the CRTC and restore the 2019 decision, thereby…
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MONTREAL – Cogeco Inc. announced yesterday a revenue increase of 3.7% to $649.3 million, for its third quarter, which ended on May 31st 2021, compared to the same period last year.
This was partially attributed to an increase in its Canadian broadband services revenue by 10.2% due to its December 2020 acquisition of DeryTelecom, as well as “the cumulative effect of sustained demand for residential high-speed Internet since the beginning of the pandemic and rate increases implemented for certain services,” according to a press release.
Cogeco also reported its adjusted EBITDA increased by 1.3% in Q3, reaching $302.3 million, according…
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Rogers, Telus and Bell have all put out new low-cost and occasional-use wireless plans in compliance with a CRTC directive to do so by today.
The directive was part of the outcome of the CRTC’s recent review of mobile wireless services and required each of the three national companies to provide customers with three new low-cost mobile plan options.
The Commission mandate says the carriers must include unlimited Canada-wide calling, unlimited text messaging, and a minimum of 3 GB of data. Fido (owned by Rogers), Koodo (owned by Telus) and Virgin (owned by Bell), are all…
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PIAC unhappy with lack of information provided
The CRTC yesterday publicly disclosed there has been a 95% decline in the total amount of unauthorized mobile telephone number transfers and SIM swaps from October 2020 to May 2021.
The disclosure was made in response to a February request from the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) for the CRTC to direct mobile carriers to make public the number of unauthorized mobile telephone number transfers and SIM swaps made per month for each of their wireless brands, which they currently submit confidentially to the CRTC.
PIAC did not find the CRTC’s response to its…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC yesterday released accessibility reporting regulations, made under the Accessible Canada Act.
Outlined in Telecom and Broadcasting Regulatory Policy CRTC 2021-215, the regulations “generally establish procedural requirements relating to the reporting obligations of broadcasting undertakings, Canadian telecommunications common carriers, and telecommunications service providers under the ACA,” according to the policy.
More specifically, they “concern the manner and form of accessibility plans, feedback processes, and progress reports under the ACA.”
Where possible, the CRTC aligned its regulations with those of other ACA regulators, particularly the Governor in Council.
The ACA, which came into force in July, 2019, required the…
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By Ken Kelley
DESPITE BEING SEPARATED by the 49th parallel, both Canada and the United States are facing remarkably similar challenges when it comes to the widespread rollout of broadband internet service.
In an online roundtable discussion hosted by the Canadian Chapter of the International Institute of Communications last week, CRTC chair Ian Scott and his American counterpart, Acting FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel, compared notes and observations on what they are seeing in their respective countries.
“There was a time before this pandemic when a lot of policymakers thought broadband was just nice to have,” Rosenworcel began, “but those days are over….
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GATINEAU — The CRTC announced last week it is reopening a proceeding regarding a proposed annual digital media survey, saying it now wants the survey to be administered to both Canadian and foreign digital media broadcasting undertakings (a.k.a. streamers) alike.
When the proceeding was first launched in March 2019, the CRTC said its intention was to apply the annual survey to all currently licensed Canadian broadcasting undertakings to collect financial information on their digital media broadcasting activities. At the time, the CRTC said the survey would not be administered to non-Canadian digital media broadcasting companies that provide services in…
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