By Samer Bishay
IT’S NO SURPRISE CANADIANS are paying some of the highest wireless prices – especially for data – in the world.
In another international audit of prices last fall, by Rewheel Research, it confirmed what Canadians already know: we pay far too much. In public surveys released by Canada’s telecom regulator earlier this month, Canadians said overwhelmingly they feel cell service in Canada is more expensive than abroad.
Affordability is the main reason the federal government ordered the CRTC to move up its review of the wireless market and start a critical public hearing February 18, a…
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TORONTO – Intended to make a few waves just as the CRTC kicks off its two-week public hearing into its policies on the wireless market in Canada, Ice Wireless today said a few new plans, with one set at 99-cents per week, will launch next month.
“If we can do this in Canada’s North, where network costs are higher, there’s no reason we can’t do it in other parts of the country, if we’re allowed,” said Samer Bishay, president and CEO of Ice and its parent company Iristel.
Ice Wireless is a regional mobile network operator, where the company’s release says…
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By Denis Carmel
MONTREAL – On the second day of the CRTC hearing into the proposed purchase of Groupe V Media by Bell Media hearing, the first intervenors were the Independent Broadcast Group.
The concern of the group of broadcasters which included Channel Zero, Stingray Digital, OUTtv and others, is the diversity of voices issue.
“The Canadian broadcasting landscape is now even more consolidated and integrated than it was even nine years ago, in 2010, when the Commission last looked squarely at some of the consequences of vertical integration and ownership concentration in the Canadian market,” their intervention reads.
At the time the…
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Textnow is the largest free phone provider in the United States
By Greg O’Brien
WATERLOO, Ont. – How is it that a Canadian company has seen tremendous success as a mobile virtual network operator? Simple. While they’d love to grow in Canada, the company has instead penetrated the much larger, more competitive, American market.
Waterloo’s textnow was founded in 2009 by CEO Derek Ting (not to be confused with Ting Mobile, another successful Canadian MVNO doing great business in the U.S. and is owned by Toronto’s Tucows) and Jon Lerner who wanted to see everyone have access to mobile technology at an…
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WOODSTOCK, ON — Similar to a campaign launched by TekSavvy last month, Execulink Telecom is asking Canadians to write their members of parliament through its petition website that opposes the major telecom providers’ appeal of the CRTC’s lowering of wholesale access rates last year.
The “You Deserve Fair Pricing” website states that, after the CRTC made its decision in August, Execulink passed on the savings to the majority of its Internet customers by significantly reducing their monthly bill, but if the large network operators succeed in their appeal, Execulink will have to raise the price of its packages again.
“We…
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Critics say that claim is misguided
VANCOUVER – Telus’s claim that it has reached, on one of its wireless plans, a 25% reduction in price, as promised to Canadians by the Liberal government, is wrong, according to critics, because the intent was always for a further reduction in prices from December 2019.
This month, Telus created a page on its website advertising that its Peace of Mind plan for a family of four, with 10 GB of data each, with an annual cost of $2,880 meets and beats the Liberal government’s annual goal of reducing wireless prices by 25% –…
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Will the CRTC let Bell buy Groupe V Media?
By Denis Carmel
MONTREAL – Another chapter in the ongoing saga between Québecor and Bell took place on Wednesday when Bell appeared in front of the CRTC to seek permission to buy Groupe V Media (once known as TQS), a French conventional television network operating in the Quebec market.
The transaction has a price tag of $20 million. The sellers are Remstar (45.14%), Fiducie Seismikmax (9.86%), Caisse de Dépôt et de Placement du Québec (15%), Fonds de Solidarité des travailleurs du Québec (15%), and Investissement Québec (15%). Maxime Rémillard, through Remstar and…
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OTTAWA — Ahead of the CRTC’s public hearing next week to review its wireless policies, research firm Abacus Data released results Wednesday of a survey commissioned by Shaw Communications that found 95% of Canadians say regional wireless providers increase competition and provide better service to customers.
Furthermore, 66% of Canadians agree competition from regional wireless companies like Freedom Mobile, Eastlink and Vidéotron has resulted in reduced prices charged by the national carriers, says study.
“One reason Canadians value having strong regional wireless network options is because most see a direct connection between reduced prices charged by the national carriers and increased…
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OTTAWA – The Québec Association for the Recording, Concert and Video Industries (ADISQ) has asked the Governor-in-Council to send back and force a rehearing of a CRTC decision in December that it says unfairly allows Sirius XM Canada to put more money into an English-language fund over a French-language one for Canadian content contributions.
French-language Musicaction and English-language Factor are two funds that receive annual injections of money as Canadian content development expenditures – in this case, a minimum of four per cent of Sirius’s annual revenues. Since its initial licensing in 2005 and until 2012, Sirius XM had been…
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GATINEAU – The CRTC disputed a central claim in Netflix’s submission to the Broadcast and Telecom Legislative Review panel which suggested the streaming platform had no reliable way to assess whether a movie was certified Canadian content in order to aid in discoverability.
In Netflix’s January 2019 submission, it said there is “no readily accessible database of certified Cancon that allows online services to electronically, and reliably, cross-reference content libraries” for the sake of including certified Canadian content in their search results. Netflix recommended the government or the industry create an electronically accessible database that online services can easily cross-reference…
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