MONTREAL – Stingray Digital Group announced Monday Valérie Héroux is joining its management team as vice-president, content acquisition and programming, effective November 11.
Héroux, who will be based in Montreal and report to Mathieu Péloquin, will oversee Stingray’s content and programming team as well as publishing and label relations to advance Stingray’s content strategy, says the company press release.
She had been senior director of content and strategic partnerships at Videotron and prior to that role, she was senior legal counsel for Québecor Média.
Héroux “brings over 10 years of experience in media and broadcasting, with a proven track record of…
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GATINEAU – In what’s being described as a puzzling move by many (all of whom declined to go on the record with us), Videotron has filed a tariff modification with the CRTC to decommission its Giga Service "Download 501-1000 Mbps/Upload 0–100 Mbps” since it will cease offering that service to its retail as well as wholesale customers.
Puzzling because while the general assumption is that customers will always want more speed, Videotron is left with a 400 Mbps maximum offering in the Quebec market while its biggest competitor Bell is offering 1.5 Gbps speeds.
As we reported…
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SHAWINIGAN – The Québec government today announced a new $100 million Régions branchées (Connected Regions) project.
The projects (submit yours now!) receiving funding will deliver reliable, high-speed broadband Internet service at a cost comparable to urban services, reads the press release, in French. The province made it clear it is seeking projects which hit the CRTC defined broadband threshold of 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps up.
The new money should help over 70,000 homes and several thousand businesses in Quebec which are currently underserved by their current connectivity choices.
The zones being given priority with this new…
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But it may have support to change that CoL from other Canadian BDUs
OTTAWA – The Federal Court of Appeal this week refused to hear Vidéotron’s appeal of its condition of license which requires it to take part in a new ratings system using set top box data from all large pay TV providers.
Earlier this year, the Quebecor-owned BDU pulled out of the industry working group which is tasked with making the set top viewer data part of the ratings of the television industry in Canada and in May, as we reported, the company asked the…
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Competition Bureau has its worries, too
GATINEAU – In the summer Rogers Wireless introduced 36-month device financing plans into the Canadian wireless marketplace.
The service providers which introduced these new plans (Telus quickly followed suit, and then Bell and Ice Wireless had begun or where about to launch three-year device plans) were hailed by some as increasing smartphone affordability and generally being pro-consumer. Others hailed in the opposite direction.
On August 2nd, as we reported, the CRTC sent a letter to providers to cease that practice and then on August 30th, Continue Reading
GATINEAU – As part of the unrelenting effort by Canada and other jurisdictions to put an end to fraud and scam calls, last December, the CRTC launched a proceeding that would see the Implementation of universal network-level blocking of calls with blatantly illegitimate caller identification.
The deadline for telcos to have that in place, if they don’t already, is December 19th.
This summer, however, Bell suggested going even further and, as Cartt.ca reported, applied for Commission approval for a pilot project which would use artificial intelligence to build on universal network blocking tools to stop certain verified fraudulent and…
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GATINEAU – Corus has recently filed an application to the CRTC to amend its conditions of licence to be allowed to delay spending on Canadian Programming Expenditures for 2020.
By condition of licence, Corus must devote 30% of the previous year’s gross revenues to the acquisition of or investment in Canadian programming. Also, by condition of licence, Corus can underspend any given year’s expectations by 5%, but that must be reinvested the following year.
Better than anticipated ad and subscription revenues, however, have left the company in a bit of a financial bind, it has told the CRTC.
A Corus spokesperson told…
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WOODSTOCK, Ont. – Execulink Telecom announced Friday it is lowering prices on for most customers where it is a third party internet access provider.
To give customers an even better experience, all plans will now include unlimited data usage with no activation fees, the company announced.
This follows the decision of other independent ISPs such as TekSavvy and Distributel, who announced they were dropping prices thanks to the CRTC’s decision to lower the wholesale fees such independents have to pay to the large incumbent broadband players.
Of course those incumbents are appealing that decision to the Federal Court.
“We…
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GATINEAU – The first call for applications for Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut, and all other satellite-communications-dependent communities in Canada closed on October 3.
While the CRTC confirmed that it has received 15 applications for funding, these applications were filed confidentially and will not be made public by the Commission.
Northwestel, however, made a sunmary of its own application public and Iristel has shared its application with Cartt.ca, defining the companies’ visions for bringing 50/10 Mbps Internet with unlimited data options to every community in Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut.
We asked a handful of other companies for their applications, too, but…
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Alleges monopoly in northern of Quebec
OTTAWA – After asking the CRTC to force Bell to provide access to its cable network in the region of Abitibi-Témiscaminque (which is branded Cablevision), Vidéotron and five residents of that remote region of Québec (Including outgoing MP, Christine Moore), wrote Jeanne Pratt, senior deputy commissioner-mergers and monopolistic practices branch at the Competition Bureau asking her to investigate Bell under sections 75 and 79 of the Competition Act.
Section 75 states the Commissioner may apply to the Competition Tribunal which, if it finds that
“(a) a person is substantially affected in his business or is…
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