GATINEAU — Rogers has asked the CRTC to reverse its decision made in an April procedural letter that allowed Bell to delay deployment of one-way toll-free (TF) trunks between Bell’s network and Rogers’ network to carry TF traffic destined for Bell TF numbers until August 17, 2020.
In a review and vary application filed May 20, Rogers says it was given no notice the Commission intended to give Bell a deadline extension for deploying the TF trunks, which originally were to be installed by April 30, 2020. In an abridged copy of the application, Rogers says it will now…
Continue Reading
GATINEAU — Dartmouth, N.S.-based independent telecom provider City Wide Communications has asked the CRTC to order Eastlink to relocate a third-party Internet access (TPIA) point of interconnection to a more central Halifax site, claiming the current location outside of the city gives Eastlink an undue preference.
Currently, Eastlink’s TPIA service point of interconnection (POI) for Nova Scotia is located at its data centre in Pennant Point, which is a rural community approximately 30 kilometres away from downtown Halifax, says the City Wide application
The independent claims in its Part 1 application, filed on May 22 and posted on the CRTC’s…
Continue Reading
LONDON, U.K. — Rural mobile subscribers in Canada enjoy some of the fastest download speeds in the world, says the latest report from mobile analytics company Opensignal.
Released today, The state of rural Canada’s Mobile Network Experience – May 2020 report also found rural mobile subscribers have access to 4G networks close to 90% of the time — a percentage more commonly seen by mobile users in more populated areas, Opensignal says.
For this report, Opensignal analyzed the data of users on Canada’s three largest mobile operators — Telus, Bell Mobility and Rogers. According to its analysis, rural users on the…
Continue Reading
GATINEAU — The CRTC has accepted Cogeco Connexion’s request for final offer arbitration with Bell Media regarding a dispute between the companies over wholesale rates for distribution of Bell’s French language youth channel VRAK.
In a letter dated May 21, the Commission asks Cogeco and Bell to file their final offers for the linear and multiplatform wholesale rates for distribution of VRAK by Cogeco. The final offers are due by June 5, 2020. After examination, the Commission will select one in its entirety and the decision will be binding on the two companies (unless of course they come to…
Continue Reading
GATINEAU — Vista Radio’s application for a broadcasting licence to operate an oldies music FM radio station in North Bay, Ont., was approved Monday by the CRTC.
The English-language commercial FM station will operate on the 90.5 MHz frequency and will broadcast 126 hours of local programming each broadcast week, of which 10 hours and 28.5 minutes will be devoted to spoken-word programming, according to the applicant information included in the Commission’s decision approving the radio station’s licence.
In each broadcast week, seven hours and 46 minutes of spoken-word programming will be devoted to local news and information, with two…
Continue Reading
By Ahmad Hathout
EDMONTON – A Calgary bylaw that sought to regulate the relationship between private entities and the city for access to municipal rights-of-way is not binding on telecom companies, the Alberta Court of Appeal said Thursday.
The highest court in the province upheld, 2-1, a lower court’s determination that the terms of the bylaw be amended to remove “telecommunications services” from the definition of “utility provider” because telecommunications is the jurisdiction of the federal government. The bylaw forced entities to get – in some cases multiple – permits to construct within rights-of-way.
The bylaw effectively gave the city the power…
Continue Reading
Incumbents wanted to postpone until it can be done in person
By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – The Federal Court of Appeal will hear the wholesale rate appeal via online videoconference in June, the court said Monday, after the appellants sought last week to have the hearing held in person – even if that meant delaying the proceeding.
Eastlink, Rogers, Cogeco, Shaw, and Videotron as well as Bell sent letters to the court last week requesting the delay because they argued the complexity of the case could not be hashed-out over videoconference. The arguments were challenged by TekSavvy and the Canadian Network Operators…
Continue Reading
MAGOG, Que. – The Québec government said today it will help fund 66 projects selected from its “Régions branchées” call for broadband expansion announced in October 2019.
The new builds will provide broadband Internet at a comparable price to those offered in urban areas to more than 60,000 households. Please click here to see the list of projects.
The selected projects are located in 11 regions of Quebec, namely those of Bas-Saint-Laurent, Saguenay – Lac-Saint-Jean, Capitale-Nationale, Mauricie, Estrie, Outaouais, Chaudière-Appalaches, Lanaudière, Laurentides, Montérégie and Center-du-Québec. The government contribution to the projects, which will be carried out by Cogeco, Bell, Videotron,…
Continue Reading
VANCOUVER – This week Telus officially launched Call Control, an new service the company says is an improvement on the CRTC’s best practices for call filtering services and universal call blocking.
Call control is a free feature available to home phone customers in B.C. and Alberta – and now to all wireless customers nationally which blocks the majority of autodialed calls from reaching customers.
The majority of nuisance calls, including scams, are generated by computer-dialers that enable spammers to dial many numbers at once and are normally unable to respond to the Call Control message. Of the first group of…
Continue Reading
GATINEAU — In an application filed last week, Eastlink has asked the CRTC to review and vary its mid-February decision regarding the terms and conditions of access to cable carriers’ aggregated wholesale high-speed access (HSA) services (also known as third-party Internet access services).
In the decision issued February 14, the CRTC clarified the rules for resellers, saying they can offer HSA services on a wholesale basis to other resellers. The CRTC also directed Eastlink and other cable carriers to make a number of revisions to the terms and conditions of their wholesale HSA services.
While Eastlink doesn’t reference the general…
Continue Reading