By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – The Supreme Court of Canada will not hear a big telecom appeal about the alleged incorrectness of the CRTC’s decision to reduce the rate for internet capacity purchased by smaller service providers.
The decision, announced Thursday morning, exhausts the legal route for a challenge of the August 2019 rates that dramatically reduced the amount that smaller providers would need to spend to purchase network capacity from the larger players. The rates were never implemented because it almost instantly was appealed to the CRTC, the federal government, and the courts.
The SCC does not give reasons for why…
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SWIFT outlines its top five lessons
By Greg O’Brien
OTTAWA – The Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, which continues its study on the accessibility and affordability of telecom services, must now be inured to overheated rhetoric, but Quebecor Inc. CEO Pierre Karl Péladeau took it a bit further on Tuesday.
After, rightly, singing his own company’s praises when it comes to connecting Quebecers, spending billions on home internet and delivering serious wireless competition in the province and then taking his usual swings at Bell Canada’s “obstruction”, he took aim at third party internet service providers, saying they deliver “zero” in…
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Whatever the SCC decides, all still await the CRTC’s Review & Vary call
By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – The Supreme Court of Canada will, on Thursday morning at 9:45, release a decision on whether it will hear an appeal of the August 2019 decision which the CRTC set new wholesale internet fees for incumbents, a decision which also forced the likes of Bell, Rogers and others to pay retroactive fees to independent resellers.
Both Bell as well as the large traditional cable carriers sought leave to appeal the Federal Court of Appeal decision which upheld CRTC decision 2019-288—Final rates for aggregated wholesale…
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LEOs and wireless and fibre fans and how the government’s spectrum policy lacks vision
By Bill Roberts
ONE OF THE FEW POSITIVE side effects of the Covid-19 pandemic is that it has forced everyone to recognize the importance of access to broadband.
It has also underscored the serious problem of the digital divides, be it an affordability divide or the lack of reliable, robust, fast broadband in rural and remote areas. According to CRTC data, 87% of Canadians have access to excellent broadband speeds with unlimited data, but only 45% of rural Canada and 35% of Indigenous communities have that same access,…
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OTTAWA — Seven in 10 Canadians listen to commercial radio on at least a weekly basis, with 39% saying they listen daily, according to a new report prepared by Ipsos Public Affairs on behalf of the CRTC.
In comparison, 39% of Canadians surveyed for the report said they listen to streaming music services on a weekly basis, while 32% said they listen weekly to CBC/Radio-Canada. The next two most-popular audio formats were podcasts (22% said they listened on a weekly basis) and satellite radio (17%).
According to the report, a car radio is by far the most commonly used device to…
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CCO Tony Geheran on growth opportunities and funding broadband better
By Greg O’Brien
IN THE CANADIAN TELECOM world, the two big eastern Canada-based companies get a lot of the attention from those of us in the press.
And they should. They’re dominant in wireless and broadband and pay-TV in the most populous two provinces in Canada. They also own sports teams and television and radio stations and digital outlets. Their names are on the arenas in which some of our most beloved pro teams play. They’re in the media and they are the media. We can’t help ourselves.
Which means Telus, big as…
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OTTAWA – On Monday, the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage continued its study of Bill C-10, which would amend the Broadcasting Act, and heard from representatives of the Canadian Media Production Association, Reynolds Mastin, president and CEO, Erin Haskett, chair of the board and Damon D’Oliveira, vice-chair.
CMPA began by endorsing the bill, but with needed changes. “(1) empowering the CRTC to ensure fair deals between streaming services or broadcasters with independent producers through codes of practice; and (2) ensuring that Canadians continue to own Canadian content,” Haskett said.
The CMPA has proposed codes of practices or terms of trade to…
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OTTAWA and GATINEAU — The Competitive Network Operators of Canada (CNOC) are asking the CRTC for expedited and temporary relief from Rogers Communications’ recent move to phase out new activations of DOCSIS 3.0 modems used by third-party Internet access (TPIA) service providers leasing Rogers’ networks. Rogers wants its TPIA customers to transition to DOCSIS 3.1 modems.
In a Part 1 application filed February 16 and posted to the Commission’s website on February 22, CNOC asks the Commission to determine that competitors using Rogers’ TPIA service be allowed to continue to activate DOCSIS 3.0 modems, when ordering download speed tiers…
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By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – Bill C-10 passed second reading unanimously last Tuesday and was officially referred to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage for study, which of course, has already begun.
The prior two meetings on the bill to amend the Broadcasting Act were, for all intents and purposes, labelled a pre-study of the legislation, in order to get a heard start hearing witnesses before the bill was approved in second reading.
So, officially, the meeting last Friday was the first meeting to officially look at the legislation.
However, the committee chair informed members and witnesses at the start of the meeting…
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By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – In the disagreement between the Fédération culturelle canadienne-française (FCCF) et la Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne (FCFA) and the CBC over the alleged lack of transparency of the CBC in filing its Mission Metrics survey, the CBC responded on February 17 and the FCCF/FCFA the following day.
“The survey on perception filed on January 18, 2020, is a fulsome and adequate response to the undertaking we agreed to at the (CRTC) hearing,” wrote Claude Galipeau, executive vice-president, corporate development of the CBC in French.
He goes on to explain that the polling firm Léger gathers…
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