TORONTO – Wireless upstart Data On Tap (dotmobile), filed a petition to federal cabinet Tuesday asking the federal government to overturn the portion of the CRTC’s recent wireless policy decision which excluded a mandate for full mobile virtual network operators to participate in the wireless market in Canada.
Dotmobile is Canada’s first full MVNO but has yet been unable to come to a wholesale agreement with any Canadian wireless network operator (company owners say none of the carriers even return their calls seeking a meeting). The CRTC’s much-ballyhooed wireless decision, however, didn’t mandate access for full MVNOs like…
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By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – After a week of complaints that Bill C-10, the bill to update the Broadcasting Act, would instead cause all Canadians’ YouTube videos and Instagram posts and so on to fall under CRTC jurisdiction, Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault said late Monday a new amendment is coming to try and fix the fuss.
On April 23, when Julie Dabrusin, Parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, proposed to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage that Section 4.1 of Bill C-10 should be removed because it “has created some confusion for people on whether or not social media…
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GATINEAU — The CRTC announced today in an information bulletin it is adopting a new standardized approach to monitoring linear community channels and on-demand community programming services, which will serve as general guidance going forward and will come into effect on September 1, 2021.
In July 2020, the Commission launched a proceeding to gather input on its proposed standardized approaches to monitoring community programming. The Commission received 10 interventions from Bell, Rogers, Cogeco, SaskTel, Telus, Csur la tele, the Community Media Advocacy Centre (CMAC), the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS), the Conseil provincial du secteur…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU — The next test of Canada’s national public alerting system, Alert Ready, will be conducted on May 5, the CRTC announced today.
With the exceptions of Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and Nunavut, provincial and territorial emergency management organizations in other parts of the country will issue test alerts to be distributed on TV, radio and compatible mobile devices.
For a wireless device to receive a test alert, it must be connected to an LTE or 5G wireless network at the time the test alert is issued; capable of receiving wireless public alerts; and equipped with a recent Canadian version of…
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OTTAWA – Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, François-Philippe Champagne, said today in a letter the 3500 MHz spectrum auction scheduled for June 15th will not be delayed.
Several companies and organizations had asked for a delay in the auction so that they could reconsider applying, since the CRTC changed its wireless policies just days after the auction application deadline and if they knew then what they know now, they might have applied.
The mid-band spectrum is considered crucial to the roll out of next generation 5G networks.
The minister’s short letter addressed to Distributel CEO Matt Stein, reads as follows:
“Thank…
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Wireless, broadband grow, Covid curtails media, overage revenue continues to shrink
By Greg O’Brien
MONTREAL – Bell Canada reported today it has added 108,468 net new mobile, retail Internet and IPTV customers in the first quarter of 2021, ended March 31st, a 51% increase over Q1 last year.
Company revenue in the quarter grew 1.2% to $5.7 billion, and adjusted EBITDA 0.5% to $2.43 billion, “representing the first quarter of growth since the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis,” reads its press release. Net earnings, however, were down 6.3% compared to Q1 2020 to $687 million.
Cash flows from operating activities jumped 37.3% to…
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By Len St-Aubin
THINK ABOUT HOW MANY millions of audio and video clips get posted to social media every day. Now contemplate, for a moment, the human and other resources that would be needed to supervise, regulate and control it all.
That is what the Liberal government has just proposed to do with an amendment to Bill C-10 that it pushed through Parliament’s Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage meeting Friday. That will be your tax dollars at work: wasteful, ineffective jobs for regulators, and freedom of expression be damned.
With the deletion of one clause (4.1) in Bill C-10, the bill to…
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CCSA, Distributel, Novus want application process reopened to allow more telecoms to participate in auction
TORONTO — Independent telecom service providers Distributel Communications, Novus Entertainment and the Canadian Communication Systems Alliance (CCSA), which has over 100 member companies, have written to Innovation, Science and Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne in support of a request last week by the Competitive Network Operators of Canada (CNOC) for a 90-day delay to the start of the 3500 MHz spectrum auction currently scheduled to begin June 15.
In a letter today shared by Distributel CEO Matt Stein (who also chairs CNOC), the independent telecom company Continue Reading
Clause by clause process inches along
By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – At the outset of the clause by-clause revisions of Bill C-10 on April 19, Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage chair Liberal MP, Scott Simms set the tone: “Buckle up, folks. This is the fundamental core of parliamentary democracy at its best. It’s going to be an exciting time—so exciting that we’ll probably sell the story rights to Netflix.”
Of course, we’re not sure the big streamer largely at the heart of some of these amendments wants to buy that option…
The very first amendment to the Bill was introduced by the Green…
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GATINEAU — The CRTC today approved an application by Acadia Broadcasting Limited to acquire two Halifax radio stations — CKHY-FM (Jewel 105) and CKHZ-FM (Hot Country 103.5) — which are owned and operated by Evanov Communications.
The proposed value of the transaction ($5,120,167) was approved by the Commission in its decision today. This price includes the purchase price, the amount of working capital at the time of the application in September 2020 (to be transferred at closing), and the value of assumed leases calculated over 60 months.
In its approval of the radio station purchases, the Commission denied Acadia’s request…
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