Incumbents have already asked the CRTC for a stay of the rates
By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – In a lengthy, thorough decision, the Federal Court of Appeal on Thursday said the CRTC’s August 2019 decision setting final wholesale rates for aggregated wholesale high-speed access services, and hundreds of millions in retroactive payments, was just fine.
The decision goes through the history of wholesale rate setting, which actually dates back to 1979. The Court outlines the details of decision CRTC 2019-288 referencing productivity factors, upstream traffic growth rates, attribution of segmentation costs, speed-banding, unrecovered costs, working fill factors (WFF), coaxial cable…
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OTTAWA – The Federal Court of Appeal has sided with the third party internet service providers in their defence of the August 2019 CRTC decision which lowered wholesale rates they pay to the incumbent telcos and cablecos – and established retroactive payments dating back several years.
It was a unanimous 3-0 decision and grants the respondents (the independents) their legal costs, too.
Companies like TekSavvy and Distributel and Start.ca serve tens of thousands of Canadians by leasing space on the networks of Bell, Rogers, Telus, Cogeco and the like and when the CRTC set the new rates with that decision,…
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By Denis Carmel
GATINEAU – Back in May, the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) had filed an application with the CRTC stating contact tracing applications which were then mostly only on the drawing boards were worrisome and asked the Commission to investigate the wireless carriers’ involvement to ensure there would be no violation of the Telecom Act.
On 17 August, CRTC staff wrote back saying they thought the public interest would not be well served by a public inquiry. However, PIAC is trying again, now that the federal government’s app has launched and has been downloaded by many Canadians…
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GATINEAU — As expected, Iristel is officially asking the CRTC to review, vary, rescind and stay certain aspects of its recent decision which found the company guilty of traffic stimulation toward phone numbers in the 867 numbering plan area (NPA) area code in Canada’s far north.
The Commission’s decision (which we reported on here) was meant to end a dispute between Telus and Iristel in which the former accused the latter of traffic stimulation-related activities that caused a noticeable spike in traffic from Telus’s network to Iristel’s 867 numbers, which generated revenue for Iristel through high long-distance termination charges.
In…
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By Denis Carmel
GATINEAU – Operating a competitive pay telephone service provider (CPTSP) is difficult since it is, after all, a nickel-and-dime business.
AFX Communications is, or rather, was, such a company, providing competitive payphone services in certain regions in Quebec.
In May 2019, it filed an application with the CRTC claiming Bell stopped, since March 2019, paying the required $0.80 a call when the payphone was connected to a Bell business line. Bell said the tariff only applies to calls made over a pay telephone access line (PAL) and not to calls made on phones connected to business lines. Bell also…
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GENEVA — As the growth in media companies’ spending on content continues to far outstrip growth in those same companies’ revenues, it’s time to consider a new way to think about the value of media, says the World Economic Forum (WEF) and Accenture in a new report published last week.
According to the WEF, in a post on its website September 4, the worldwide value of new media content could quite easily run into the hundreds of billions of dollars every year. For context, traditional Canadian TV companies spent C$4.2 billion on content, according to the latest CRTC…
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OTTAWA and GATINEAU — In October of last year, the vast majority of Canadian Internet service providers met or exceeded the maximum download and upload speeds they advertised, according to the second edition of the CRTC’s Measuring Broadband Canada report, released today.
The study was conducted by broadband testing firm SamKnows on behalf of the CRTC, and was based on measurement data collected from October 1 to 31, 2019. Using the data collected from 2,035 “whiteboxes” deployed to Canadian homes, the study examines download and upload speeds, latency, packet loss and web page loading time. Participating ISPs include Bell Aliant,…
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OTTAWA – Last week, Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault made it pretty clear, with two tweets, where the government stands when it comes to making the digital giants contribute to culture here.
In the first, he tweeted a Reuters story published by the Globe and Mail which detailed the ongoing skirmish between the government of Australia and Facebook, saying “We remain committed towards ensuring a comprehensive, more equitable digital regulatory framework here in Canada. That includes making sure that Canadian news organizations continue to inform and empower our communities.”
Minister Guilbeault then followed that up with a clarifier,…
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By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – The laws don’t need an explicit site-blocking provision for it to be used by the Federal Court as a remedy in copyright infringement cases, large broadcasters are arguing in an appeal of the country’s first site-blocking order.
In a joint submission to the court on Tuesday, broadcasters Bell, Rogers and Groupe TVA rejected an argument by TekSavvy, which appealed the November order to block GoldTV, that said site-blocking isn’t in the jurisdiction of the court because it isn’t afforded in the law. The larger broadcasters said the court has much wider latitude to resolve…
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Shaw, Videotron say up to half of legit porting requests were denied
By Greg O’Brien
GATINEAU – Last month, the wireless industry launched new measures to try to stem the rising tide of wireless number porting fraud. It lasted only a week.
Complaints from Videotron and Shaw Communications filed with the CRTC on August 20th said the Canadian wireless industry’s new enhanced process to identify phone numbers which criminals were attempting to steal were far too often rejecting legitimate number porting when customers were attempting to switch from Rogers to Freedom, for example.
Wireless number porting fraud, or SIM-swapping fraud, or port-out scams,…
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