Regulators have a real option to improve canada’s mobile wireless marketplace
by Marie Ginette Lepage
WHEN IT COMES TO THE future of our nation’s mobile wireless telecommunications market, Canadian regulators are fast-approaching an important crossroads. Recent debate, seen on Cartt.ca and elsewhere, has been focused on the idea Canada’s regulators face a terrible trade-off, in which the only way to provide consumers with more competition and choice is to do so at the expense of further investment and expansion of networks.
That would certainly be a difficult choice to make, particularly in a country like Canada, where many rural and…
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OTTAWA — The Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) today shared the news Charlotte Bell, a long-time broadcasting executive and former CAB chair, died on the weekend. She had been suffering from cancer for some time.
“Charlotte was a dear friend and valued colleague to many of us in the broadcasting sector, and all those who were fortunate to work with her are saddened to hear this news,” said Lenore Gibson, chair of the CAB board of directors, in a press statement. “Our thoughts go out to her family and friends at this time.”
Bell most recently was president and CEO of…
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By Ruby Pratka
GETTING RELIABLE HIGH-SPEED Internet to Manitoba’s far north is no easy task. Logistical obstacles, long distances and a relatively small potential client base tend to scare away large private players. And then there’s the land itself.
“The terrain up here is not cheap or easy to build through – it’s full of muskeg, which is basically quicksand, and a lot of the communities don’t have the infrastructure to make easier,” explains Ken Sanderson, outgoing executive director of Broadband Communications North (BCN), an Indigenous-run non-profit communications provider based in Winnipeg, whose goal is expanding wireless access to Northern…
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TORONTO — A group of more than 500 current and former employees of CBC/Radio-Canada who oppose the public broadcaster’s Tandem sponsored-content initiative today launched a social media campaign and website where they’ve published an open letter to Canadians to amplify their efforts to stop paid content on the CBC.
In the letter on the website (www.stoppaidcontentoncbc.ca), the group of mostly journalists asks for the Canadian public’s support in demanding CBC put an end to Tandem, the broadcaster’s new marketing division which was launched in September.
The open letter is signed by current CBC journalists, including Carol Off, Michael…
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GATINEAU — The CRTC will hold a non-appearing hearing in February regarding an application by Halifax-based Acadia Broadcasting Limited to acquire the FM radio stations CKHZ-FM (Hot Country 103.5) and CKHY-FM Halifax (Jewel 105) from HFX Broadcasting, which is owned by Evanov Radio Group.
Following regulatory approval of the acquisitions, Acadia is requesting two new broadcasting licences be issued in order for it to continue operation of the two radio stations. However, it has requested the deletion of certain conditions of licence.
In the case of Hot Country 103.5, Acadia wants the following conditions removed:
As an exception to the percentage of…
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By Dan Armstrong
IN RESPONSE TO THE December 7 article by TekSavvy’s Peter Nowak (Commentary: Why it’s so hard to grow an ISP in Canada), while I agree with Peter the current landscape is becoming less favourable for providers who resell incumbent access networks, the article almost reads as though the Canadian telecom industry is one giant pitched battle between incumbent facilities-based networks and plucky upstarts reselling their access networks.
It’s not, and I take offence to painting all facilities-based competition with the same brush as the incumbents.
I have spent my 30-plus year career in this business slowly clawing our…
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SpaceX’s Starlink beta test in Northern Ontario being hailed a success so far
By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA and KENORA – After testing SpaceX’s satellite beta service in northwestern Ontario, David Brown (above), the CEO of Kenora, Ontario-based information technology company FSET, is convinced low earth orbit satellite broadband is the “only path forward” for Indigenous communities.
“We unboxed the , and we were videoconferencing” — all within 20 minutes, he told the House of Commons industry committee on Tuesday. The INDU committee is meeting with various stakeholders to once again examine affordable and accessible…
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Also opposes final approval of Northwestel’s tariff application
YELLOWKNIFE — Far north wireless and Internet provider SSi Canada is asking the CRTC to order Northwestel to provide third-party Internet access to its “monopoly cable television and fibre-to-the-premises facilities” and to file associated tariffs and cost studies in an accelerated timeframe.
SSi Canada made the request in a Part 1 application filed with the Commission on December 7. It also asks the Regulator to expedite the proceeding, and to require Northwestel to have wholesale TPIA services tariffs in place prior to granting final approval of Northwestel’s TN 1099 tariff application to…
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Not of national importance
By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – The Competitive Network Operators Consortium (CNOC) and TekSavvy say the incumbent telecoms have not demonstrated a case of national or public importance to be tried at the Supreme Court of Canada after applying for a review of the wholesale internet rate case.
In September, the incumbents’ appeal to the Federal Court level challenging how the CRTC came to its August 2019 decision to chop the final wholesale rate, which determines how much third-party internet service providers pay to buy space on the incumbents’ networks, was dismissed. Among the incumbents’ complaints was the decision…
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By Peter Nowak
IMAGINE, FOR A SECOND, someone making fun of you for being too skinny. Then they take all your food away.
Got that image in your mind? Okay, good. You’ve just pictured what trying to grow a telecom business in Canada is like.
For years, that’s essentially what big companies such as Bell, Rogers and Shaw and their armies of lawyers, lobbyists and hangers-on have been doing to TekSavvy and other independent service providers.
They’ve argued that the only good telecom company in Canada is one that builds its own networks head-to-toe, from the poles that hold the wires in the…
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