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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Cogeco urges easing of quotas
By Ahmad Hathout
The head of Stingray Radio said Thursday that overexposing Canadians to domestic music on radio is pushing them toward streaming services.
“Whether it’s a Canadian song they don’t like or an international song they don’t like, we risk driving them to international, foreign-owned, unregulated streamers,” Steve Jones told the commission studying the definition of Canadian content on audio services.
Jones noted that, through the company’s research and through the years, Canadian music has only captured roughly 10 per cent of consumption in Canada.
“So there is historical data that suggests that listeners have a certain threshold…
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By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC on Thursday confirmed a preliminary view that regional mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) should have access to shared wireless networks even when an agreement is reached with just one of the carriers.
The commission determined Thursday that the network sharing agreements between Bell and Telus make them one national network “that results in both carriers being national wireless carriers that possess market power,” upholding a view on which it asked for comments in October.
To deny regional players access to parts of that contiguous network would, therefore, confer on the large telcos an undue…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Nearly five months after the Online Streaming Act became law, the CRTC warned about a delay in implementing the new rules after its request for funding was denied by the Department of Finance, according to a letter obtained by Cartt.
“The CRTC began working with Canadian Heritage, the Treasury Board Secretariat, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Finance to have approved financing and a revised fee regime in place for April 1, 2024,” CRTC Chair Vicky Eatrides wrote in the heavily redacted September 19, 2023 letter to then Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge.
“We were counting on…
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Cogeco Communications announced Tuesday it will launch internet services on Oct. 6 in Québec City, Châteauguay, Cap-de-la-Madeleine, Saint-Louis-de-France and Sainte-Marthe-du-Cap using the wholesale internet framework.
“Our expansion into these 5 new markets in Quebec is made possible by using the wholesale access framework as a tool,” a Cogeco spokesperson confirmed to Cartt in an email late Tuesday. “A tool that under the purview of the CRTC is currently being misused by established dominant players. This tool was designed to allow smaller, new competitors like us to enter markets dominated by large national players….
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The CRTC has approved an application by Pembina Acquisition Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary of Anthem Sports and Entertainment’s GameTV, to acquire Hollywood Suite and its four movie channels.
The transaction, originally announced by Anthem and Hollywood Suite in September 2024, is valued at $49.5 million, according to the CRTC’s decision published last week. As such, the CRTC requires Pembina/Anthem to allocate a total of $4.95 million in tangible benefits to various production funds and discretionary initiatives over seven consecutive broadcast years. In its application to the CRTC, Pembina had proposed a…
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Regulator acknowledges error, but doesn’t change outcome
By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC on Friday upheld a three-year-old decision that imposed on Bell a $7.5-million administrative monetary penalty (AMP) for preventing Videotron from accessing the telco’s poles in a timely manner.
The issue stemmed from a 2020 complaint made by Quebecor, on behalf of Videotron, for an order forcing Bell to process permit application to access its support structures. Quebecor alleged Bell was unreasonably delaying the processing of those applications; applying construction standards in an unreasonable and discriminatory way; and making it responsible for the cost of replacing structures.
The next year, the CRTC…
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Rogers claims the telco failed to comply with its ad rules
By Ahmad Hathout
Telus is alleging Rogers is refusing to allow the telco to advertise on the cable company’s valuable media properties in a move it says is harming its ability to compete.
The Part 1 application – dated June 9 but only made public on the CRTC website Tuesday – claims the issues started with Rogers refusing “on extremely short notice” to run two Telus ad campaigns on Rogers’s radio stations in November 2024, despite over 30 years of ad inventory purchases. Those cancellations have allegedly “grown into a blanket…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Sports streamer DAZN is asking the Federal Court of Appeal to clarify that its December stay of a decision by the CRTC to impose a five-per-cent base contribution on online streamers applies to it.
While the United Kingdom-based platform declined to answer a Cartt question about why it waited so long for clarity because it cannot comment on ongoing legal matters, its September 2 filing comes two days after the end of the first broadcast year in which the policy had taken effect.
The CRTC ordered in June 2024 – and finalized in…
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Related consultations launched
By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC is requiring all telecommunications service providers report to certain official bodies major outages that are now defined as those that last at least 30 minutes and affect a certain number of user minutes – with a few exceptions.
The final mandate, ordered Thursday, is incumbent on all providers with their own network equipment, support systems or that use third parties. The order simplifies the categories of services affected by outages: primary services, which are individuals and business users of all telecom services; emergency services; and specialized services, which include 988 mental health and services…
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