OTTAWA – The Department of Canadian Heritage is asking a select group of consultants to submit bids for a research contract that will do a deep dive into how the CBC impacts the country.
The contract will “assess the social, cultural and economic impacts of CBC/Radio-Canada on the Canadian media and production sectors, and on Canadian audiences more generally,” a Heritage spokesperson confirmed to Cartt.ca.
“This research is part of the department’s ongoing work to ensure our policies and programs keep pace with societal and technological changes,” the spokesperson added. “Other countries, including the United Kingdom and Australia, have conducted similar…
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GATINEAU – Consumer group Public Interest Advocacy Centre says the growing challenge of number porting fraud, where consumers’ phone numbers are essentially stolen (and then used by thieves to hack into bank accounts, for example), is an issue which requires a full public hearing to discuss.
Earlier this month, the CRTC asked the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association for more information on the matter and what the association’s members are doing to prevent the practice. PIAC says more must be done, however.
“(W)e believe this is far too serious an issue for the Commission to only involve the CWTA,” said a…
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OTTAWA – Bell Canada has applied to appeal to the Federal Court of Appeal (FCA) the CRTC Decision 2019-427, that found Bell guilty of undue preference.
“The Commission finds that Bell (…) has conferred an undue preference upon RDS, its discretionary sports service, and has subjected the service TVA Sports to an undue disadvantage by packaging the two services in a different manner,” the CRTC Decision reads, which we covered in December.
The main argument Bell brings forward in its motion is that in a 2018 Final Offer Arbitration (FOA) “The CRTC accepted Bell’s final offer, which was based…
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CHATHAM, ON — Independent ISP TekSavvy is urging Canadians to voice their support for the CRTC’s decision in August to lower Internet prices by visiting its new website, called paylesstoconnect.ca, and writing their federal member of parliament.
In a news release Monday, TekSavvy amped up its fight against incumbent telcos and cablecos, who have petitioned the federal cabinet to cancel the CRTC’s decision and obtained a stay of the decision from the courts (an earlier temporary stay was granted in October by the FCA). The incumbent have since filed review and vary applications…
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OTTAWA — The CRTC is asking the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA) to tell the Commission how the association and its members plan to combat the issue of unauthorized porting of mobile phone numbers, a fraudulent activity that has been reported with increasing frequency in recent months.
CBC News has reported recently on several instances where mobile phone customers reported falling victim to number porting.
“The Commission has become aware that certain Canadian mobile customers have been subject to fraudulent activity involving unauthorized porting of their mobile phone numbers,” the CRTC wrote January 15 in a letter to the…
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OTTAWA — The CRTC says it will not proceed with an application submitted in September requesting must-carry status under a barker licence type, on SiriusXM, for an audio-based radio guide for the visually impaired.
Evan Kosiner of Kosiner Venture Capital submitted the application on September 17, 2019, requesting 9 (1)(h) designation for the service that would allow visually impaired Canadians to have access to the alphanumeric information displayed on the screen in a car or on a portable receiver, where it would be turned into machine-read audio. The information would pertain to the song or the show being played.
In…
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Interveners will have to sign NDA
MONTREAL and OTTAWA — Bell is ready to test an artificial intelligence-based system it has developed for blocking fraudulent phone calls, and says last week’s decision by the CRTC regarding its application brings it a step closer to launching its technology trial.
According to a Bell news release Friday, its AI-based network technology could potentially block an estimated 120 million more scam calls per month than Bell is able to stop using call-blocking methods currently mandated by the CRTC.
“Our industry has made solid progress in combatting these scam calls, and Bell’s innovative new AI…
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By Denis Carmel
GATINEAU – When the Competition Bureau filed in November its intervention to the CRTC’s wireless policy review, it was expected that the reactions would be spirited, and they are.
First, some objected because the Bureau (and its specially commissioned Matrix Report) reached conclusions based on confidential information and asked that some information be shared. In that regard, Bell and Rogers got what they wanted while CNOC and Telus are still waiting for word from the Commission when it comes to that data. Telus has warned the Bureau’s intervention should be deleted from the record for…
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By Steve Faguy
MONTREAL — Quebecor is demanding the CRTC order CBC/Radio-Canada’s Tou.tv Extra paid streaming service to “cease its activities” because it goes outside the mandate of the public broadcaster and is an unfair competitor against Videotron and other regulated television service providers.
The CRTC isn’t about to go that far, but it has decided to look into whether there is an undue preference case to be made, in particular with a deal Radio-Canada has with Telus that provides Telus’s Quebec customers “exclusive” free access to the service.
Tou.tv Extra is the $7/month paid version of Tou.tv, which offers premium video…
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By Christopher Guly
OTTAWA – The new year brings many challenges for Steven Guilbeault less than two months after he was sworn in as minister of Canadian Heritage, which was just a month following his debut as a federal politician, bringing the Liberals a win in Laurier-Sainte-Marie when he was elected MP for the downtown Montreal riding previously held by the NDP and the Bloc Québécois.
Co-founder of Quebec’s largest environmental organization, Équiterre, and a former campaign manager for Greenpeace, Guilbeault is tasked with managing a new ecosystem that calls on him to create new regulations for both social media platforms…
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