GATINEAU – Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the CRTC today officially postponed the upcoming public hearing into the renewal of the CBC/Radio-Canada broadcasting licences.
The hearing was supposed to begin May 25th and a new date will be set at a later date, said the Commission.
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OTTAWA — The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC), ACORN Canada and the National Pensioners Federation (NPF) jointly called Tuesday for more Covid-19 relief for low-income consumers in the form of unlimited Internet access for at least the next six months and low-income Internet and wireless plans to help all Canadians stay connected while isolating at home during the coronavirus pandemic and possibly beyond.
The consumer groups addressed their demands to not only the federal government and the CRTC but also Canada’s Internet and wireless service providers.
“The Canadian government has told Canadians to stay at home which we are doing,” said…
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GATINEAU — In a procedural letter dated April 3, the CRTC informed Bell and Rogers it was extending the deadline for Bell to comply with the Commission’s December 2019 decision that directed Bell to deploy one-way toll trunks to connect to Rogers switches in the Bell operating territories in which Rogers also provides service, which was supposed to resolve the two companies’ dispute over toll-free call routing.
In the letter, the Commission says it considers the Covid-19 pandemic to be “an unprecedented force majeure situation during which it would not be appropriate for the Commission to expect Bell…
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Quarterly results reporting begins this week
By Greg O’Brien
TORONTO – Both Cogeco Inc. and Shaw Communications will release their fiscal 2020 second quarter results this week, but since their quarters ended February 29th, those numbers will resemble more of a time capsule than an account of what is going on in the market right now and the real news will be what the companies have to say about what’s happened since with the Covid-19 crisis.
“We believe Canadian telcos and cablecos remain structurally sound and even after our target price revisions, we believe the sector will provide investors attractive potential total…
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GATINEAU – The CRTC expedited the release of its decisions on two broadcast transactions, announcing today Bell Media can proceed with its purchase of the V television network and Leclerc Communications can purchase CJPX-FM Montreal.
The specific rationale behind each decision is not ready for release and the announcement notes they will be available at a later date.
First the Bell-Groupe-V approval (which was a deal valued at $20 million, for the five off-air TV stations, when announced):
The conditions on Bell’s acquisition will “guarantee adequate levels of investments in local programming and original French-language Canadian programming,” says the press…
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By David Farnes
GATINEAU – The CRTC Emergency Services Working Group has notified the CRTC the mandated Next Generation 9-1-1 implementation dates are in jeopardy due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The availability of IP Voice service by 9-1-1 service providers (Bell, SaskTel and Telus) is to be made available to 9-1-1 call centres by June 30, 2020. Real-time text functionality is to be made available by December 31, 2020.
The current 9-1-1 service technology is mandated to be decommissioned on June 30, 2023, but all of these dates are in jeopardy as the world scrambles to adapt to the crisis and deadlines…
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TORONTO — The end of the fiscal second quarter for Corus Entertainment “feels like forever ago,” CEO Doug Murphy told financial analysts Wednesday morning during the conference call which was ostensibly to talk about the December 1 – February 29 period, but was really about how the company is handling the Covid-19 crisis.
Company CEO Doug Murphy and CFO John Gossling talked about the measures the company has taken to protect its people, help its clients and cushion impacts on its bottom line, with Murphy adding everyone will “work together to weather this storm.” The company rapidly deployed about 75%…
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By Denis Carmel
GATINEAU – On March 24th, Bell Canada filed an application with the CRTC to request permission to block so-called Wangiri fraud calls, until June 1.
Wangiri calls work the following way: one gets a phone call, most often on a cell phone and it rings only once. Wangiri is Japanese for “one ring”.
Then the victim is tempted to call back, thinking it missed a call. When it does, the “bad actor” will try to keep the victim on the phone for as long as possible and when the victim gets its telephone invoice, it will have incurred significant…
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By Konrad von Finckenstein
WITH RESPECT TO CANADIAN content, the Broadcast and Telecom Legislative Review panel report views the internet through a broadcasting lens.
It works from the basic tenet that everyone involved in electronic media content (from “curators” like broadcasters, streaming services and newspapers, to “aggregators” like BDUs, Stack TV and MSN News, to “sharing” services like Facebook and YouTube) should be subject to CRTC regulation, and contribute to the creation and dissemination of Canadian content.
To that end, it recommended companies providing commercial audio and video content into Canada by way of streaming over the internet (let’s call them “over…
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GATINEAU — In a letter posted March 30 on its website, the CRTC announced it is extending the deadline for wireless service providers to file their 2020 Wireless Code compliance reports to April 30, 2020.
Originally the compliance reports were due by March 31, but Iristel’s Ice Wireless submitted a procedural request March 27 asking the CRTC to give wireless service providers until at least the end of April to submit their respective reports, given the ongoing Covid-19 situation.
On Monday, the CRTC approved the deadline extension to April 30.
“Staff is of the view that the ongoing Covid-19 situation constitutes…
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